by David Chapman
Staff Writer
Benjamin Franklin once said “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Given the current tumultuous economic conditions and ever-increasing cost of health care, one company with operations in Jacksonville is applying that same principle to health care and leading the way toward saving employers and individuals money in the future by instituting a prevention system of insurance today.
U.S. Preventive Medicine (USPM), with headquarters in the Dallas suburb of McKinney, Texas, offers several preventive, early detection and chronic condition management services that can improve health outcomes and reduce health care costs.
“Health care is also in a crisis,” said USPM founder, Chair and CEO Christopher Fey. “It’s been put on the back burner a little bit with what’s going on in the financial and real estate markets, but it’s a perfect storm brewing.
“People are getting slammed as costs go through the roof and they don’t know what to do about it.”
Though the company is in the process of going global, Fey said Jacksonville is a big part of the plans.
The USPM office in Jacksonville serves as the customer care center, what Fey calls the company’s U.S. and international service hub. Currently, the local office employs almost 50 people but the goal, said Fey, is to create at least 100 more jobs with the majority of them being filled locally. Jobs range from onsite nurses and information technology to call support and sales and marketing.
Plans for offices in Chicago, New York, Paris and London among other cities are currently underway.
USPM President and COO Frederic Goldstein works at the local office and has been encouraged by the reception those plans have received from the public thus far — but he sees it as just the beginning.
“We’re trying to turn the system on its head,” said Goldstein. “We’re a one-stop shop for preventive care.”
Goldstein compares the different levels of the service USPM offers to a multitiered credit card — each tier represents a different level of service.
The Prevention Plan, the beginning tier, allows individuals to determine their health risks and receive customized plans on how to reduce potentially detrimental health risks.
Once available to only employers, within the past month the service has become available to individuals.
Getting to the point where one can see their risks takes two intertwining steps.
According to Goldstein, those in The Prevention Plan first fill out an online health risk appraisal detailing different aspects of their life — questions like if the individual smokes or wears their seat belt. Next, the participating individual must have blood work done at a local clinic (locations and scheduling are available through the Web site) for detailed analysis.
The health risk appraisal and lab results are then combined to create a health risk packet, available online and sent to the individual through the mail, for the individual to look through and identify their highest risks.
This personal health file is continuously updated, secure, encrypted and follows the federal Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Each person in The Prevention Plan receives a customizable Web site profile complete with the level of risks for things such as diabetes, heart disease, skin cancer, depression and back pain among other maladies; a prevention schedule with needed doctor visits based on the participants age and gender; physician comments; and a comprehensive library of medical knowledge.
Additionally, participants can view their to-do and action lists regarding actions that will lower their highest risks.
Completing the action programs will do more than lower a participant’s risk. Depending on the program, it will earn reward points, applicable to gift cards redeemable at over 350 locations.
Another tier of The Prevention Plan deals with care management, intended for those already afflicted with costly chronic conditions. This program aims to prevent the current condition from progressing and for early detection of other potentially harmful conditions.
A third tier combines the two services: creating The Prevention Plan, plus wellness and disease management.
A final tier, the U.S. Prevention Network, provides a way for prevention-informed consumers to more efficiently spend their health care dollars.
Dr. Sammy Beg also works from the Jacksonville office where he oversees product development and reviews the care management and prevention services.
Like Goldstein, Beg believes USPM and these services provide a one-stop shop for customers.
“Prevention is an entire spectrum of health care,” said Beg. “Everyone talks about it, but we are actually doing it … we are a one-stop shop compared to other wellness programs.”
The affordability of these products compared to coverage provided by health care providers is another plus, said Beg.
Prevention Plan coverage costs $29.45 a month (along with a $64.95 initial charge) or a one-time payment of $364.95.
Prevention benefits more than just the individual consumer, according to independent economic think-tank the Milken Institute. The Institute’s October 2007 study, “An Unhealthy America: The Economic Burden of Chronic Disease,” shows proper prevention can positively impact the economy.
The study shows that by modestly reducing avoidable factors — unhealthy behavior, environmental risks, failure in early detection — it would lead to 40 million fewer such cases and gain over $1 trillion in labor supply and efficiency by 2023.
Tommy Thompson, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and Wisconsin Governor from 1987-2001, has said the USPM’s Prevention Plan “could be the biggest innovation in health care in the last 30 years.”
He remains a proponent and believes it’s a premise that can be successful if done properly.
“Absolutely,” said Thompson. “It’s a concept I’ve been fostering for a long time … it makes no sense to me to sell insurance to people after they get sick.”
Thompson added that people are spending around $1.6 trillion dollars a year on health care. That figure could be lower, he said, if people smoked less and were less obese — two items on the Prevention Plan.
“There needs to be an emphasis on the front end,” said Thompson. “For chronic illness, this is where U.S. Preventive (Medicine) could help.”
Besides individuals, employers are able to provide The Prevention Plan to their employees.
The company’s newest client, The Aon Corporation, the leading global provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerages and human capital consulting, will offer its U.S.-based employees the service.
Fey hopes more employers and individuals see the benefit of prevention plans.
“When I talk to employers, they tell me it’s (rising health care costs) a problem,” said Fey. “When I ask them how they plan to address it, they usually say ‘I don’t know.’
“We didn’t invent any of the solutions to these problems … we did create a comprehensive way to address these health care problems through prevention, though.”
Less than a month into offering prevention plans to individuals, Fey isn’t quite sure how quick the company will take off — but he is optimistic about what he’s heard.
“We can’t quite predict how big this will get, yet,” said Fey, “but a lot of companies are asking.”
For more information, go to www.uspreventivemedicine.com or www.thepreventionplan.com.
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