Program encourages companies to invest in preventive care

Business leaders who believe that a company is only as strong as the people who work there may want to start seriously thinking about their employees' health.

It turns out that many workers aren't as healthy as they look, which is bad news for employees and their employer's bottom line.

Greenwich Hospital's Healthy Living Center recently began a new corporate program to identify individuals who feel and look healthy, but are at high risk for heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

The condition is called metabolic syndrome, and it is diagnosed through tests that takes just a few minutes, said Donna Gaudioso-Zeale, the Healthy Living Center's director.

Three months ago, the center began offering its screening program to businesses throughout the region for $30 per person. The center's staff visits organizations in the morning to evaluate employees who have fasted through the night. Participants are given a simple finger-stick blood test that returns a full cholesterol panel and fasting blood sugar levels.

"A drop of blood can give you a wealth of information," Gaudioso-Zeale said.

Those results, coupled with waist circumference measurements and a blood pressure reading, yield a metabolic syndrome diagnosis.

Employees meet with a registered nurse and dietitian to review the findings. Those who have the syndrome or who are at risk are given referrals to one of the Healthy Living Center's programs, as well as suggestions to prevent diseases from surfacing, she said.

"The whole idea is to identify individuals and empower them to make lifestyle changes," Gaudioso-Zeale said. "It takes 15 minutes to get all the results in front of them."

Since the program's inception, the center has visited 10 small to midsized businesses in lower Fairfield County, screening 123 people, she said. About 25 percent of those screened were diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, and 46 percent had higher LDL levels -- the bad cholesterol. And 25 percent had low HDL, which is usually referred to as good cholesterol, Gaudioso-Zeale said.

"These people look healthy. Corporations think their people are healthy," she said. "These are companies that felt they basically had healthy populations. I, as a professional, was also surprised by the findings."

Companies get a report card telling them what percentage of their employees are at high risk, Gaudioso-Zeale said. If employers take the findings seriously and adequately arm their employees with good preventive tools, they can help save thousands of dollars, she said.

"When dealing with an asymptomatic population it's all about behavior," she said. Any of these problems, when caught early on, can be reversed or kept at bay with lifestyle changes.

Prevention is one of the new mantras of the business world, especially with the rising cost of health care, said Tanya Court, The Business Council of Fairfield County's director of public policy and programs.

The business council, through a committee studying the health of the region, has been focusing on addressing rising obesity, diabetes and chronic diseases.

"We found on a national level, 75 percent of health-care spending is related to chronic disease, which is largely preventable," Court said.

Many companies are recognizing the need to do a better job at prevention and are implementing work-site wellness programs, ranging from offering free flu shots to making cafeteria food healthier, she said.

If a company focuses on prevention, the payback can be enormous, Gaudioso-Zeale said. When a worker is sick, not only is there a loss of productivity, but also the company pays higher insurance costs. It's much less expensive to address a behavioral problem than to pay for an angioplasty down the road, she said.