The Missing Pillar of Health & Navigating Private Exchanges

In this show, we talk about the importance of rest and recovery for employees as well as private exchange evaluation and policy-related questions.

The first guest is Jeffrey Durmer, MD, PhD, co-founder and chief medical officer, FusionHealth. U.S. companies have long been aware of the direct relationship between employee health and business health. A rise in wellness initiatives is helping to curb the growing health care crisis and its effect on productivity, health care costs and overall marketplace competitiveness of U.S. companies; however, there is one major, unifying component that is still missing from the vast majority of wellness programs, and it is not only required for health promotion, disease prevention and workplace productivity -- but it is essential to the success of exercise and nutrition-based health gains as well. The missing pillar of health and success for U.S. business is the rest and recovery of its workforce.  

The second guest is Rosemarie Day, president, Day Health Strategies. The employer-sponsored benefits landscape is changing rapidly, and private exchanges are a key part of this transformation. We know that private exchanges are giving employers an opportunity to provide employees with more choice, flexibility and transparency while potentially reducing administrative burden and costs. One commonly stated issue, however, is that the market is too new with too many players to make sense of what option might fit best with a particular organization. How should employers and associations navigate this space? In this segment, Rosemarie and the hosts will also be diving into some larger policy-related questions where private exchanges are concerned. For example, what effects could private exchanges have on the larger health care marketplace and how might they drive policy decisions? What changes might we expect in this market if the ACA were repealed or altered significantly?