In 2006 we realized our system of providing health care to employees was broken. We weren’t providing “health” care; we were providing “sick” care.

Approximately 45% of PC Construction employees who paid health care premiums didn’t actually use the health care system during the year – not even once. They didn’t get a physical, a mammogram, a colonoscopy – nothing. With preventive care covered 100% simply by paying their premiums, these treatments were essentially already paid for, yet these employees had failed to cash in.

I often talk about the 80/20 rule where 20% of your challenges take 80% of your time. In our health care model we had the 50/2/1.5 rule, meaning that 1.5% of our participants over a 2-year period generated 50% of our health care costs. And most disturbing was that 60% of the health care challenges among the 1.5% were preventable. In other words, less than 1% of our covered population generated about a third of our health care costs, all which could have been prevented.

The remaining handful of people, the .5% who became ill, is the reason why we have insurance. I don’t mind paying into a system to cover the .5% because I may someday be one of those folks who is faced with a catastrophic illness out of the blue.

So there we were with 45% of our covered employees not even getting a physical, even though they had already paid for it, and 1% of our covered population generating a third of our health care costs. We surmised that most of those in the 45% category who never went to the doctor would someday turn into our 1%. But how could we reach these folks?

This story will continue with future posts to our blog. Click here to read Part 1 of this Health and Wellness blog series.