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The Benefits and Wellness Bulletin (BWB) is dedicated to helping you explore new ideas around wellness and benefit offerings. If you are not an ASHHRA member, please check out the benefits here and consider joining ASHHRA here. 
FROM ASHHRA
Dear Health Care Executives: As we enter the holiday season, it is easy to replace the food groups with too much chocolate and cheer. Remember to try to eat healthy, stay active, and focus on the true meaning of the holidays—being grateful for family, friends, and how plentiful our lives are. This edition of the Benefits and Wellness Bulletin (BWB) will provide some insight into wellness initiatives to try out during these festive times. While trying to reduce your waistline, are you also trying to reduce the waistline of your benefits expenditures? This edition will also help you to think out of the box around benefit costs and give you some strategies that just might work in your organization. Did you know you can even read this edition of the BWB on your smart phone while on an elliptical? To learn more, click here. ASHHRA appreciates your dedication to health care, and we will continue to improve in assisting you in the way you do your work. Please feel free to email me at sdrake@aha.org for any reason—we are here to serve you, our valued members. Sincerely, Stephanie H. Drake BENEFITS
By Karrie Andes
Many self-insured employers are reviewing annual agreements for 2013 benefits. While not exhaustive, this quick checklist can serve as a handy reference before you sign on the dotted line. SOURCE: EMPLOYEE BENEFITS NEWS Decisive action by employers in 2012—in particular, moving more employees into low-cost consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs) and beefing up health management programs—was rewarded with the lowest average annual cost increase since 1997, according to the National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans," conducted annually by Mercer. Growth in the average total health benefits cost per employee slowed from 6.1% last year to 4.1% in 2012. The cost averaged $10,558 per employee in 2012. Large employers—those with 500 or more employees—experienced a higher increase (5.4%) and higher average cost ($11,003).
SOURCE: WORLD AT WORK Unlike more extreme cost-cutting measures by employers, like downsizing or layoffs, retirement benefits have remained mostly intact during the Great Recession, according to a Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies survey. The notable exception is a drop in the number of companies offering defined benefit plans or "traditional pension plans" from 19 percent in 2007 to 16 percent in 2012.
SOURCE: WORLD AT WORK By Jennifer Benz
During annual open enrollment, your employees are reading and hearing a lot about the importance of using their medical plans, participating in wellness programs, and staying ahead of illness. And then open enrollment ends. Cue the chirping crickets. Whether it’s fatigue, or just habit, too many employers stop communicating once enrollment is over. This, unfortunately, can be a momentum killer. SOURCE: TLNT By Bob Herman
A major component of a hospital's compensation program involves retirement benefits. For hospital executives, supplemental executive retirement plans, or SERPs, are a staple of compensation programs, and the benefits within retirement plans could be make-or-break for any person or institution. Kevin Talbot, executive vice president and practice leader of total compensation and rewards at Integrated Healthcare Strategies, shares his insight on trends with hospital and health system executive retirement plans and the causes behind those trends. SOURCE: BECKER’S HOSPITAL REVIEW As the economy slowly recovered from the recent recession, American workers’ participation in employment-based retirement plans stabilized, according to a new report by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).
SOURCE: EMPLOYEE BENEFIT RESEARCH INSTITUTE Most Americans will leave an average of 9.2 paid vacation days on the table this year, a 48 percent increase from 2011's average of 6.2 unused paid vacation days, according to Hotwire.com®, which released additional findings from its second annual "American Travel Behavior Survey," conducted online by Harris Interactive.
SOURCE: HR.BLR.COM Nearly one-third (32 percent) of U.S. adults who would like to retire do not know if they will be able to retire or do not believe they will ever be able to retire, according to a Pentegra Retirement Services survey. In addition, just 19 percent of those who would like to retire say they will be able to retire at age 65.
SOURCE: WORLD AT WORK The American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) has announced a new awareness-building campaign intended to help employers identify and respond to chronic diseases that commonly affect worker health and productivity.
SOURCE: HR.BLR.COM By Andrea Davis
Benefits can be the loyalty glue that help employees of all generations stick with an organization, but only if those benefits are well-communicated and well-understood, consultant Ron Leopold told audience members at a panel discussion on multigenerational engagement held during the 2012 Benefits Forum & Expo. SOURCE: EMPLOYEE BENEFIT NEWS By Alicia Caramenico
With patient satisfaction influenced more by hospital staff than by fancy lobbies or high-tech equipment, attracting and keeping a great workforce is a vital part of any hospital's success. Hospitals looking to recruit and retain top talent should take note of Windsor Regional Hospital for inspiration. The Ontario, Canada-based hospital now offers its employees unlimited vacation. SOURCE: FIERCE HEALTHCARE WELLNESS
Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could eat what you wanted, skip the gym and still look terrific? Sigh. We all can dream, right?! Unfortunately, the majority of us mere mortals don’t live in that wonderful world, so as the holiday season kicks off, we start to worry about the extra pounds joining us for Thanksgiving (and New Year’s...and Valentine’s Day...and Memorial Day). Want to maintain your weight and eat some delicious treats this holiday season? Here’s our guide to keeping fit and healthy...and eating your cake, too.
SOURCE: SCRUBSMAG.COM By Angela Gonzales
The combination of a struggling economy and the bustle of the holidays is creating a stressful time for employees. Stress costs the American industry more than $300 billion a year, according to the American Institute of Stress. Every day, about one million workers are absent as a result of stress, and 55 percent of employees said they were less productive at work as a result of stress, according to an American Psychological Association survey. SOURCE: PHOENIX BUSINESS JOURNAL By Matt Dunning
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Nov. 20 announced a series of proposed rules under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act governing employee wellness programs and essential health benefits for certain employers. Under the proposed rules, employers sponsoring wellness programs that include rewards or surcharges based on specific health standards and outcomes—such as a reduction in weight, cholesterol or use of tobacco—can increase the maximum dollar amount of the rewards offered to employees to 30 percent from 20 percent of the total cost of their health care coverage, and can raise incentives tied to smoking prevention or reduction programs to up to 50 percent of total coverage costs. SOURCE: WORKFORCE.COM By Cheryl Powell
A Northeast Ohio hospital has found a cure for its own rising health-care bills. Southwest General Health Center President and Chief Executive Thomas A. Selden credits an aggressive wellness program tied to financial incentives for helping control his hospital’s employee health benefit costs. SOURCE: AKRON BEACON JOURNAL ONLINE By Chelsea Rice
Low employee participation has often been the pitfall for company wellness programs. Studies have found that less than a quarter of employees take part. But just four months after the launch of the wellness program at Swedish Medical Center, a 369-bed acute care hospital in Seattle, the hospital's Labor Management Committee shared a sparkling cider toast. Through a combination of a targeted communication strategy, a financial incentive, and a collaboration with a health care consulting firm, the hospital reached a 91 percent participation or "engagement" rate with employees. SOURCE: HEALTHLEADERS MEDIA By Kari Andren
Wellness programs can help businesses cut health care costs while making employees healthier, speakers said Thursday at a symposium sponsored by Excela Health. Wellness programs are typically optional for employees, but require things such as annual check-ups, preventive screenings, online modules, or meetings with a wellness coach in exchange for lower monthly premiums or a deductible. SOURCE: TRIB LIVE By Steve Wartenberg
Until the day he was offered the job as executive sous chef of the new Hollywood Casino Columbus, Tim Dionisio smoked a pack of cigarettes a day. Dionisio is now four months into a cold-turkey goodbye to tobacco products. Quitting wasn’t by choice, but from necessity, if he wanted to work at Hollywood Casino Columbus. It does not hire smokers or allow employees to smoke on the premises or even in their homes. Although it is not yet a trend, a growing number of companies—especially hospitals—refuse to hire smokers. Ohio-based companies with this policy include Scotts Miracle-Gro and the Cleveland Clinic. The goal is to improve the health of employees and reduce the company’s health-care costs. SOURCE: THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Nearly 80 percent of office workers polled come to work even when they know they’re sick, according to the third annual "Flu Season Survey" from Staples. This is an increase of 20 percent over last year. For those who stay home, more than two-thirds return to work when they are still contagious.
SOURCE: WORLD AT WORK By Susan Fletcher, Ph.D.
"I get so attached to my patients that I just can’t get them out of my head when I go home. Every week I find myself getting distraught over a new favorite patient who isn’t doing well." Is this you? As a nurse, you witness the fear, pain, and suffering of others every day. But when you get too immersed in the lives and trials of your patients, you can become a victim of "compassion fatigue." Compassion fatigue is also thought of as "secondary post-traumatic stress." And once it sets in, you can lose mental energy and get burned out. SOURCE: SCRUBSMAG.COM Past and present winners of the C. Everett Koop National Health Award gathered to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the award program at the Health Enhancement Research Organization’s 2012 Forum for Employee Health Management Solutions. Here are some of the innovative programs implemented by this year's winners—the State of Nebraska and L.L. Bean—and past award recipients, along with their advice for others.
SOURCE: EMPLOYEE BENEFITS NEWS People often turn up their noses at the idea of "hospital food," but NDP leader Adrian Dix wants to change that in B.C. He says the Fraser Health Authority should start buying locally grown food to serve in area hospitals. The NDP says the food would be fresher, more appetizing, would result in less pollution than imported goods, and would help boost the local agricultural community. Dix says B.C.'s Fraser Valley has some of the best agricultural land in the province, plus health facilities serving 1.6 million patients, but there's no formal relationship between the two.
SOURCE: CBC NEWS Nurses who work long shifts are more likely to experience job dissatisfaction and burnout, and their patients' care may suffer, according to a new study. The research included nearly 23,000 registered nurses in California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Sixty-five percent of the nurses worked shifts of 12 to 13 hours.
SOURCE: HEALTHDAY / U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT 
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