Health care costs continue to rise at an unsustainable rate, and although there are many reasons why—the aging population, new technologies, new drugs and medical advances—there is one major reason: People are unhealthy. The Centers for Disease Control says 75% of all medical spending is for chronic conditions, many of them preventable.

How Vitality helps
The big opportunity in cutting health care costs is to help people be healthier. But behavior change is hard. Humana Vitality is a science-based, data-driven rewards program that gives members financial incentives to eat better, get active, and improve their health.
Humana Vitality is a joint venture with Discovery Health, which developed a similar program in South Africa. As two recent studies show, that program has succeeded in changing people’s behaviors and lowering the costs of chronic illness.

How Vitality works
Vitality uses a simple, three-step approach:

1. Know your health: Members first take a health assessment, which gives them an overview of their true health status (people tend to over-estimate their healthiness).
2. Improve your health: Vitality then recommends specific goals and ways to achieve them.
3. Earn rewards: Members get points for making healthier choices.

• points for getting preventive care
• points for getting a blood check and biometric screening
• points for joining sports leagues and participating in races and other sports events
• points for taking online health and nutrition courses
• points for results: for losing weight, stopping smoking, and for BMI, blood pressure, blood glucose and total cholesterol levels that are in range

The rewards
Points can be traded in for discounts on merchandise, hotel accommodations, movie tickets, charitable contributions and more at the “Vitality Mall.” Or health plan premiums may be lowered.

Similar results for Medicare members
Martinson et al (Preventive Medicine, 2003) found that adults 50 and older who increased their physical activity from less than one day a week to more than three incurred $2,202 less in health care costs than those who remained inactive over a three-year period.
Ackerman et al (American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2003) found that Medicare members who participated in a community-based exercise program incurred lower increases in overall health care costs than those who didn’t participate.
Wang et al (Obesity Research, 2005) showed that physically active individuals, including elderly Medicare retirees, incurred significantly lower health care costs than sedentary individuals, irrespective of BMI.

The rest of the story
Humana has a history of developing new ways to engage people in improving their own health. We have built mobile phone apps to help track exercise and nutrition. We have pioneered pedometer programs, including several for school-age children and one for morbidly obese adults. We partnered in B-cycle, a new bike-sharing company in cities across the United States, and, more recently, partnered with Ubisoft to develop a fitness game for the Xbox 360 + Kinect.
We continue to look for ways to help people be healthier—to eat less, smoke less, drink less and exercise more—so they don’t need so much health care in the first place. That would control costs—and improve quality of life.
For more information about Humana Vitality, call (504) 219-6600.

The results: better health, lower costs

Peer-reviewed studies show Vitality works.

1. A study of 948,974 Vitality members enrolled in Discovery Health shows that engagement in the program leads to reduced hospital costs. Highly engaged Vitality members with cardiovascular disease, cancer, and endocrine and metabolic diseases—common chronic conditions that can be affected by behavior—had fewer hospital admissions, and shorter stays when they were admitted, than those with the same conditions who were not engaged or had a low level of engagement:

IMPACT ON HIGHLY ENGAGED VITALITY MEMBERS	HOSPITAL ADMISSIONS	HOSPITAL COSTS
Participants with cardiovascular disease	7.4%	7.2%
Participants with cancers	13.2%	15.1%
Participants with endocrine and metabolic diseases	20.7%	21.4%

2. A study of 304,000 over five years shows that, over time, the percentage of health plan members who choose to become engaged in Vitality fitness activities increases, and so does the intensity of their participation. This is important because the point of the program is to motivate people to improve their health behaviors, not just reward those already living healthy lifestyles.

PARTICIPATION RATES	YEAR 1	YEAR 5
Percent of health plan members using the gym	27%	33%
Percent classified as “high activity”	10%	13%
Percent classified as “medium active”	7%	11%
Percent inactive	76%	68%

3. The five-year study also showed:

• The increase in engagement was associated with a decrease in the probability of  hospital admission and overall inpatient health care costs.
• For each additional weekly gym visit, the probability of hospital admission was reduced by about 6%.

Humana is walking the walk​
Vitality was introduced to all Humana employees on the company health insurance plan in July 2011. Here are the participation numbers after six months:

• 24,796 associates eligible for Vitality
• 18,367 (74.1%) got biometric screenings to learn their personal health data
• 15,276 (61.6%) took the Vitality health assessment
• 7,173 (28.9%) selected personal goals
• 7,773 (31.9%) redeemed rewards
• 14.7% of subscribers were Silver status or higher (highly engaged)
   

Contact us:

Humana

(504) 219-6600

www.humana.com