Wellness at Work Case Study: Davidson Companies

Company Culture Change – Proactive Strategy for Wellness

Founded in 1935, Davidson Companies (Davidson) is a full-service financial services holding company and investment firm with offices in 15 states. Similar to many other companies, Davidson has experienced its share of rising medical costs in the form of increasing claims for insuring its 850 employees.

But, instead of passively watching how healthcare costs dig deeper into the pockets, the company based in Great Falls, Montana decided to take a new approach to wellness, including an extensive corporate strategy to prevent diseases and control medical costs.

WorldDoc Integral Part of Full-Scale Wellness Program

In 2003, Davidson made an attempt to implement a full-scale wellness program, but “the company was not ready yet”, said Dan McLaughlin, Vice President, Director of Human Resources with Davidson. But the wellness-oriented Human Resources department did not give up.

Davidson was on the lookout for a web-based medical decision support tool that could identify employee health risks, educate employees on conditions and treatments and change health behavior. In October of 2004, the company purchased WorldDoc’s Personal Health Management System, MyHealth 24/7, because of the system’s strong capabilities to support the employees in their daily health decisions.

Today, Davidson employs a continuous and proactive wellness program of which WorldDoc is an important and integral part. “As soon as we were introduced to WorldDoc and MyHealth 24/7, we realized that the web-based Health Management System was a great way for us to initiate a much more powerful wellness program down the road”, said Dan McLaughlin.

Commitment to Employee Health Communication

Davidson’s human resources staff shows extraordinary commitment to communicating health, wellness and the benefits of using WorldDoc to its employee population. In fact, Davidson has proven to be a perfect example of how excellent employee communication increases the utilization rates of MyHealth 24/7 contributing to positive effects for both the employees and employer.

When Davidson first introduced WorldDoc, employees feared that they would get swamped with emails. But, determined in its mission to communicate health, the company did not want to miss out on the excellent communication opportunity that emails pose; the majority of Davidson’s employees work at a computer. Therefore, Davidson’s independent benefits agency, Payne Financial Group Inc. sends out a weekly wellness message with health tips in addition to WorldDoc-provided communication pieces. In conjunction with the launch of MyHealth 24/7, Davidson, together with WorldDoc, arranged a Health Fair that was concluded with the completion of Health Risk Assessments (HRAs).

However, the feared “spam reaction” from employees did not occur. “Quite opposite to our initial concern, the feedback from our employees has been overwhelmingly positive, both to the emails we send out and to using WorldDoc as a decision support tool. We work the promotion materials into our company strategy and adjust them to build on Davidson’s other programs”, said Dena Engstrom, Coordinator of Benefits Specialist.

Davidson makes it a point to continually remind its employees to use WorldDoc. For new employees, the encounter with WorldDoc starts already in the new hire packet that contains benefits information and continues with weekly reminders. One year after the launch of MyHealth 24/7, Davidson has come to a point where employees look for wellness communications and see WorldDoc as a valued benefit coming from the employer.

Trading in the Crystal Ball for Behavior Stats and Lower Medical Claims

The positive results of Davidson’s communication efforts become obvious when studying WorldDoc’s database statistics. As of October 2005 – the one-year anniversary of Davidson’s launch of MyHealth 24/7 – 79% of the employees have registered and use the WorldDoc site. As many as 59% of the registered users have completed a WorldDoc Health Risk Assessment.

“The Health Risk Assessments have not only helped our employees realize what they need to do to improve their health, but also helped the company to target appropriate health topics to employees. In addition, the company’s senior management has been able to recognize where the population risk factors are – an important foundation for decisions on company healthcare policy and investments”, said Dan McLaughlin.

As Davidson’s independent benefits agency, Payne Financial Group uses WorldDoc HRA data to produce first-class medical reports for the senior management. “Now we know what health behaviors are driving the medical costs within the company group and do not have to turn to the ‘crystal ball’”, said Angela Dowling Managing Executive with Payne Financial Group and Davidson’s Benefits Advisor.

“It takes some time and effort to get people into the habit of using WorldDoc on a regular basis, but nowadays our employees have bonded with WorldDoc. If we took it away from them, it would not be without a reaction. More importantly, Davidson also has seen its relative medical claims costs go down in the past year – a fact that is likely connected to WorldDoc and our company wellness efforts”, said Dan McLaughlin.

WorldDoc and HSAs Round up Benefits Package

Davidson currently insures its employees under a self-insured Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) health plan, but the company is looking towards offering Health Savings Accounts as an alternative for employees who wish to pursue that option. “Moving towards Health Savings Accounts and the consumer driven mentality, WorldDoc will be even more important for employees who can use MyHealth 24/7’s hands-on tools to their advantage, becoming informed and cost-conscious consumers of healthcare. With the combination of Health Savings Accounts and WorldDoc, we anticipate promising results. WorldDoc has definitely rounded up our benefits package”, said Mindy Kiser, Manager of Employee Relations and Training at Davidson.

With Big Steps towards Better Health

Taking wellness and health all the way, Davidson’s employees do not just read and learn about health, but take important steps towards fitness and disease prevention – literally. Since launching WorldDoc, Davidson has started several walking groups that encourage employees to get together at different times several days per week, doing just what the name indicates – walking. The company promotes the walking groups via massive email campaigns to all employees.

Employing its corporate strategy for wellness and better health among employees, Davidson has plans to continue keeping a grip on health within the company. For the spring of 2006, in combination with the rollout of the Health Savings Accounts, Davidson will arrange another Health Fair in collaboration with WorldDoc.

Davidson Employees – Happy WorldDoc Users

One year after the launch, WorldDoc has taken the opportunity to ask the best reviewers of all what they think of WorldDoc, that is, the employees. In the September 2005 User Survey, 90.9% of Davidson’s respondents indicated that they appreciate WorldDoc as a benefit provided by the employer. In addition, 57% of respondents used WorldDoc to determine if they need to see a doctor, and 33% said that WorldDoc helped them avoid at least one unnecessary doctor’s visit. Out of the respondents, 10.3% were able to save themselves and the company money by switching a medication from a brand name to a generic drug.

As one Davidson employee expressed it in the September User Survey comments:

"What I like the best: availability of resources that provide sufficient information to save me the cost of a doctor's visit!" (Davidson WorldDoc User comment in survey 09/05)

We couldn’t have said it any better.