Putting employees in the healthcare driver’s seat

During his presentation yesterday at the conclusion of GE’s healthymagination showcase, Dr. Bob Galvin, the company’s chief medical officer, told the audience that if GE is going to really take the transformation of healthcare seriously, it can’t just take an external focus — it has to involve employees. “Healthcare is local, and it starts at home,” he said. “And it’s every one of us that has to be impacted.” One very visible step in that direction happened Wednesday during GE’s first-ever Global Day of Health. Bob described how the vast majority of GE’s 320,000 global employees essentially had a “stand-down” to take time to focus on health with group walks, WiiFit tournaments, blood pressure screenings, nutrition classes, rope jumping, ping pong, yoga, and hula hoop competitions. The photos below show just a handful of the GE employees who had fun while focusing on health at hundreds of sites around the globe.

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As Bob told the showcase audience: “We’re trying to really get the message out that we believe in a culture of health You can talk it, but you’ve got to walk it.” But he stressed that while events such as the Global Day of Health put healthcare in the spotlight, there’s a larger, more rigorous component of GE’s healthymagination push to improve the health of GE’s employees, retirees and their families.

GE has committed to providing increased education about healthy living, new resources at GE worksites, online tools to help employees better track and manage health, and incentives to live healthier lives. Healthymagination also includes a site certification process, in which GE facilities around the globe will be measured against specific standards related to health and wellness. And GE will turn its 175 health centers into wellness clinics and increase the use of employee incentives and decision support for health and prevention.

Bob told the group that the site certification process is already being piloted at more than 20 sites, with some of the new programs including non-smoking campuses; the labeling of all food sold at those sites; and the creation of subsidies for healthy food and exercise.

It’s not just good for health, he said, but it’s also good for business — as making healthy choices ultimately helps drive down GE’s own healthcare costs, too. That cost component of healthymagination was the subject of Bob’s talk about a pilot program currently underway at GE’s Cincinnati, Ohio facility, where the company is working with UnitedHealthcare to offer incentives to employees who strictly control their diabetes. The full story, “Tough Love, Lower Health Costs,” is available on BusinessWeek.com

Read stories from the healthymagination showcase, which just concluded in NYC:
* “Remote healthcare tech: There’s no place like home”
* “Manufacturing precision leaps from factories to the ER”
* “Patient advocacy: Improving the cancer conversation”
* “Visualizing world health with the data artists at GOOD”
* “Dr. Kalkut on feeling spleens, fearful patients & design”
* “Using tech to help make a better diagnosis the 1st time”
* “Developing Health: A clinic grows in Brooklyn”
* “Prof. Bruce Nussbaum on design, tech & emotion”
* “Pediatric design turns scary MRIs into ‘Adventures’”
* “Dr. Gaynor: Individualizing cancer therapies is the goal”
* “GE announces cancer research; $250M fund; clinic aid”
* “GE webcasts Oct. 21 healthymagination press conference”
* “Tackling access with Brivo imaging technologies”
* “A closer look at GE’s pocket-sized Vscan ultrasound”
* “Vscan pocket-sized, ultra-smart ultrasound unveiled”
* “A breakthrough decision support solution for docs”
* “The business of bringing healthymagination to market”
* “At the showcase: Health by design and window tweets”
* “Scintillating tech: The world’s 1st high-def CT scanner”
* “Healthymagination tech showcase kicks off in NYC”