How can you affect what people do outside the doctor’s office?
One aspect is education. Doctors teach patients about their diagnoses, what they mean, how their conditions’ progression can be prevented, and what medications will help with them.
Then, an action plan is put in place for the person. The person is shown what to do and how he or she should care for the condition. If you help your employees stay on their action plans, they can continue productive, healthy lives, while maintaining their regular routines at home and at work. If they don’t follow the action plan, they could move into the symptomatic stage, which means they won’t always be able to function well at work. Then you have presenteeism — when workers are physically on the job, but, because of illness or other medical conditions, are not fully functioning — or even absenteeism.
How can employers help minimize the effects of their employees’ chronic conditions?
Employers need to enable and encourage employees to communicate with their doctors. As people have more and more chronic illnesses, those illnesses need to be monitored more frequently. Some of that monitoring may need to occur in the workplace.
One way to improve monitoring is a telephone visit in lieu of a traditional office visit. Telephone visits are an excellent way of avoiding the traditional office-focused medicine of the 20th century. With a telephone visit, an employee sets up an appointment, and within 20 minutes his or her doctor is on the phone.
Another option is secure messaging. Patients can send their doctors questions or report in on how they’re doing, so the physician gets an update on their condition and has the opportunity to provide additional guidance.
Methods such as these are convenient for your employees, and you benefit by having employees take care of their medical issues in minutes online or over the phone, as opposed to them taking time off to go to the doctor.
Another thing employers can do is create healthy work environments. What kind of vending machines do you have at your job site? Are you promoting sugary drinks or are you promoting healthy drinks? When you have meetings, are you promoting pizza, cake and cookies, or are you promoting healthy snacks such as fruit? Are you promoting a nonsmoking environment?
Once you’ve encouraged healthy eating behaviors, encourage your employees to exercise in some way. You could offer fitness classes at the work environment, or help employees pay for gym memberships.
Anything you can do to help your employees with their chronic conditions will only help you and the organization.
Ronald A. Adams, MD, is regional chief of internal medicine for Kaiser Permanente. Reach him at (216) 297-2519.