CIGNA Health Management Program Reduces Disability Claims

August 22, 2011 | By MATTHEW STURDEVANT, msturdevant@courant.com , The Hartford Courant

CIGNA Corp. says it has researched and found a way to reduce disability claims among workers whose medical problems are likely to require them to take time off.

Preliminary results were released this month from research that involved 118,000 people who work for 26 employers. All of the workers were at a high risk of taking disability leave within a year, and most of those were identified as high-risk because they saw doctors for musculoskeletal or neurological problems. The program was voluntary and included an $80 incentive to be assessed and $120 to participate.

Four out of five participants were offered health coaching, workplace accommodations, assistance in losing weight, help quitting smoking, substance abuse counseling and other services. The others served as a control group. At the end of a year in the program, the group that received health management and counseling — including personal health coaching from a nurse — had 15 percent fewer short-term disability claims.

"A lot of what occurs, whether it's on the medical side or disability side, is an accumulation of a variety of physical and lifestyle and emotional issues," said CIGNA Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jeffrey Kang, who presented preliminary results this month at the Disability Management Employer Coalition's international conference in Dallas.

As a health insurer, CIGNA has access to medical claim information used to forecast the likelihood of disability claims. Disability insurance is sold as a separate product, sometimes by health insurers, but often by insurers that specialize in property-casualty or life coverage.

"What we will be recommending to our clients, our customers, is that they will see incremental value by having their health care and their disability serviced by the same company . . . a disability carrier by themselves just can't do this," Kang said.

What isn't clear yet is whether the reduced cost in short-term disability leave is more or less than the medical costs to coach high-risk workers on healthier lifestyles. It's also not clear if the cost of coaching workers on healthier lifestyles is more or less than the cost of doctor visits and other medical services that the high-risk employees would have consumed anyway.

One thing is likely, the program could have long-term benefits, such as healthier lifestyles for workers who maintain habits taught during their coaching. Presumably, healthier lifestyles also reduce the need for medical services and reduce costs to workers and employers.

"We believe that health and worker productivity are intimately tied together, and we are focused on proving that an investment in health leads to either lower disability or higher worker productivity," Kang said. "People have thought about health care as an expense; we think about health care as an investment in worker productivity."

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