Land O’ Lakes + Omada: Choosing Chronic Care Solutions for Your Employees
Increasingly, employers are choosing virtual care programs that address employees’ chronic health conditions. Here's what to consider before investing.
What to Know About Choosing Chronic Care Solutions for Your Employees: Behavior Change Innovators Omada x Land o Lakes
What benefits leaders should consider before investing in digital care programs that address chronic conditions
Every company today is in the healthcare business.
In the U.S., managing the health issues of millions of people falls increasingly on employers—regardless of size, location, or industry—and the specific plans and programs they offer their workers.
“An individual’s health, their access to health care, and therefore their well-being depends on what their employers decide,” writes management professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, in a 2020 study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, about the expanding role of employers in healthcare.
90% of total U.S. healthcare costs
can be attributed to chronic conditions
Increasingly, employers are looking to virtual care programs and related benefits that address employees’ chronic health conditions, which account for 90% of all healthcare costs. Diabetes, chronic pain management, high blood pressure, and mental health are four of the costliest conditions.
We’ve Entered a New Era of Healthcare
The work to reverse these trends (and costs) remains a challenge, especially in the midst of unforeseen global events. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 6 out of 10 U.S. adults suffered from at least one chronic condition. That number will likely continue to rise.
At least 10% of COVID-19 survivors, for example, are so-called long-haulers who experience chest pain, fatigue, and “brain fog” for months after recovery. Rates of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse disorders have increased since the beginning of the pandemic. Inflation drove 38% of Americans to either delay or skip treatment, cut back on driving, utilities, and food, or borrow money due to higher healthcare prices, creating a ticking time bomb for exacerbated, or new, chronic illness.
Meanwhile, the pandemic left many companies feeling more responsible for the well-being of their workforce, according to a Deloitte survey, even as the post-pandemic concept of worker well-being has expanded to include safer workspaces, greater work-life balance, and better mental health support.
“Because of COVID, employees have an expectation that employers will do more,” says Emily Maher, benefits director at Minnesota-based Land O’Lakes, Inc., an agricultural co-op with over 9,000 employees. “There’s a pent-up demand for organizations to be able to do that.”
How can benefits leaders make progress with employee health challenges, arguably against long odds? For starters, experts say, they need to be shrewd buyers in a fast-growing, $50 billion marketplace of care tools and programs, increasingly driven by digital apps and services.
“This is an inflection point where there’s an opportunity to take a step back and look at the landscape more strategically, ” says Janet Mertens, global research director at HR consultancy Josh Bersin Inc.
What you’ll learn in our whitepaper
Making the right choices for employees when it comes to designing health benefits, according to experts, starts with a grounding in three principles.
Designing health benefits starts with a grounding in three principles:
Omada works with innovative companies like Land O’ Lakes to provide virtual care solutions that meet the unique needs of their workforce and improve employee health. Download the full white paper to learn more about tailoring health benefits to the specific needs of your workforce.
Ready to get started with Omada? Request a demo to kick off the conversation.