Ford has quietly extended an experimental wellness program that represents the kind of innovative approach to health care that the UAW envisions for workers at the three Detroit automakers.
Health care has loomed large in negotiations between the UAW and General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. The current four-year contract, which covers about 141,000 mostly hourly workers, expires Monday at midnight.
UAW President Dennis Williams has proposed creating a co-op of unionized hourly and salaried workers at all three companies for greater purchasing power when dealing with health care providers, especially if the co-op negotiates in tandem with the Retiree Medical Benefits Trust that is run by the UAW and covers about 750,000.
The innovative thinking extends to how companies approach health care as a whole in a bid to improve health while keeping costs in check so members don’t have to pay more in the future.
Ford spends an average of $7 an hour on health care for its active hourly workers.
Savings expected
In June 2013, Ford, the UAW and the Retiree Medical Benefits Trust announced they were joining forces to create the Enhanced Care Program designed to give some of the sickest employees and retirees extra medical care, including private nurses, to treat chronic illnesses such as diabetes, asthma and heart disease in a way that would improve health while slashing the cost of care.
An initial two-year study, to include 1,200-1,500 chronically ill Ford workers and retirees who are not eligible for Medicare, began July 1, 2013. It was modeled after a smaller, similar program at Boeing where Ford’s former CEO Alan Mulally worked before joining the automaker. Based on the Boeing model, the expectation was health care costs for ill employees would be cut by 17%.
The two-year study period for the program has come and gone.
The Free Press has learned that the study has been continued through the end of the year to gather more data before any decisions are made to expand its scope to other parts of the country or to discontinue it altogether. Early data suggest it has been successful, but a full analysis won’t be completed until next year.
Ford officials were not at liberty to discuss the program, said spokeswoman Kristina Adamski.
The independent third parties who will conduct the evaluations also would not discuss the program. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health spokeswoman Stephanie Desmon said the parties involved declined to be interviewed on the Ford program at this time.
Truven Health Analytics also declined to comment on the success of the program they have been hired to evaluate, said spokesman Brian Erni.
Participation in the Ford-UAW program is voluntary and confidential. Physicians selected the participants, whose names were never provided to Ford, the UAW or the retiree trust. The patients were to be assigned a nurse for two years to attend doctor appointments and help the patient follow a prescribed health plan.
The cost was covered by Ford and the retiree trust, including the salaries of about 12 nurses.
The study is a separate initiative from health care coverage provided to retirees through the UAW trust which spends about $4.2 billion a year for 750,000 retirees at the three companies, over and above costs covered by Medicare.
Ford was the first automaker to offer focused care for chronically ill hourly workers and retirees. Chrysler was interested in the wellness program idea, but did not have enough eligible employees to proceed. General Motors officials familiar with the program could not be reached as most are involved in UAW negotiations.
All three Detroit automakers have wellness programs for salaried workers that reward health with benefits such as lower co-pays and premiums as incentives to improve their health.
Ford officials have said incentive programs for its salaried workers could evolve based on the results of the test program for the unionized workers.
The trend in health care
Most large employers have some sort of wellness program, said Gary Claxton, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization focusing on national health issues in Washington.
Programs take many forms. About half of them ask employees to complete a health risk assessment and half require a biometric screening to gather information such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels and body mass index. Claxton said. Programs can be based on the results, with cost penalties for those deemed at greater risk and incentives for those who take action and achieve health goals such as losing weight.
Claxton said wellness plans not only lower costs, but employees do not miss as much work and are more productive when they are on the job. Success cannot be evaluated quickly; results are long term because many initiatives, such as weight loss and better fitness, take time.
“The jury is still out whether they will be successful and worth the effort,” Claxton said, but the reality is that wellness plans are the direction that health care is taking.
Date: September 12, 2015