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Success Stories: Textile Company sees improvements with blood screening
Frustrated with rising health care costs, Standard Textile implements a comprehensive, annual blood screening program that goes beyond just a standard finger prick.
Between 2003 and 2006, Standard Textile - a company that manufactures textiles and apparel for a variety of industries, including health care and hospitality - watched its benefits costs per employee jump by 60%. That got the attention of the CEO, and the company embarked on a more aggressive health and wellness journey.
“It wasn’t that the company hadn’t been focused on health and wellness, just not at the level we are today,” says Scott Silver, vice president of human resources with Standard Textile, which has about 1,000 employees in the United States.
When Silver joined the company in 2006, he was asked to create a comprehensive wellness strategy. Costs were obviously an issue, but so was productivity. The average tenure for Standard Textile employees is 10 years, and Silver says many people have been with the company for 30 or 40 years.
“As all of us age, health becomes more fragile, and we have to pay attention to it,” he says. “So there was a two-fold purpose to this: one was to take care of our people and improve productivity, and the other was a business issue because we had that 60% increase in cost.”
The cornerstone of Standard Textile’s wellness program is a comprehensive, annual blood screening made available to all employees and spouses. It’s a fasting blood test administered by a third-party provider, IHS. Employees fill out a medical history and based on their age and gender, the lab test is interpreted “specifically and uniquely for that individual, which really gives us quite an advantage of helping employees have a goal to hit that’s unique to them, that’s achievable,” says Joe O’Brien, CEO of IHS. “But, more times than not, if they are out of control on something, they may have to see their physician to get on medication, or they might work on diet and exercise.”
O’Brien maintains the full-panel blood test gives employees a more accurate picture of their overall health. “Many companies do finger sticks, or maybe even a shorter panel of a blood draw,” he notes. “The problem with finger sticks is they are not medically sound. You’re not going to take that to your physician.”
At Standard Textile, employees and their spouses are incentivized to take the blood test and are then eligible for further discounts on their health insurance premiums based on the test’s results, referred to as a scorecard. The scorecard gives employees a points total and, just like in the game of golf, the lower your score, the better you’re doing.
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