Healthcare Workplace Wellness - Essay Example

The growing healthcare costs are prompting the need for high population coverage through employer-sponsored insurance coverage to improve employees' wellness and promote a healthy workplace culture. Also, to improve the health status of US, the business intervention of employees’ health insurance is needed. There has been increasing technological advancement of treatment procedures, treating equipment, and healthcare costs, which have consequently pushed the prices higher. Improved healthcare has prompted a rise in healthcare prices (Merhar, 2014). The employer-sponsored health coverage makes the insured be discounted from thinking of the cost of their care, which makes patients less concerned about the costs. This gradually pushes the process higher as most patients are not keen to note the price increase for their health as they no longer feel the insurances cover as a burden.

Moreover, there has been an increase of chronic diseases among the population, and more seeking of medical services which has made medical services highly demanded and consequently makes prices go higher. The ageing population is increasing and experiencing increased diseases threat, which makes them seek more medical services than before, and therefore raise the demand, which also raises the costs higher. As per Eddington, over 75 years’ people spend as high as $11, 965 annual medical expenses while a 19-34 patient with the highest risk pays as low as $5,114 annually (Edington, 2009). Treating chronic and terminal illness requires the provision of technologically advanced treatment, expensive medicines, and greater medical attention, which makes the treatment of a person to go higher and be unaffordable to a majority of the population who cannot meet such higher costs. Also, there has been an increase in weight-related issues among people with bodyweight having a health risk measure of 41.8% (Edington, 2009). Due to the increasing health insecurity and needing more services such as checkups and dental care, populations are seeking more medical services, pushing demand and cost higher. The Affordable Care Act has prompted an increase in some health plans due to extending their coverage to preventive and control services such as cancer screening. Also, the rise in the health coverage of being employer-sponsored makes Americans seek medical services frequently since the cost is a burden is not imposed on them. Moreover, the increasing healthcare costs are attributable to the lack of transparency in the healthcare costs were health providers adjust prices to their standards.

 Affordable health care has an employer shared responsibility mandate to support payment of health insurances of employees, which has impacted businesses to have the responsibility of supporting employees’ health coverage and support improved health care coverage for a large population in the US, and consequently improve US health care coverage status higher. The mandate is associated with a penalty and is no longer optional whereby, as per the law, any business with more than 50 employees must provide affordable health care to its workers (eHealth, 2020). Through this mandate plan, the US has been able to reach the high uninsured Americans and consequently make almost anyone is covered by health insurance. It is required that the employees meet the requirement of more than 50 employees to file reports to the health insurance and IRS, which has prompted employers to support employees to meet their health coverage consistently (eHealth, 2020). Through the act, insurance has been made more accessible and provided to a higher number of Americans who lacked healthcare affordability and coverage. Being covered by insurance makes Americans access quality healthcare and extended healthcare security.

Businesses need to get involved in sponsoring healthcare insurances to make their employees healthier and more productive (eHealth, 2020). Also, it eliminates the burden of employees worrying about healthcare affordability and focusing more on work as they feel they have more health security when the employers sponsor their healthcare coverages. The business intervention in insurance coverages helps businesses retain and satisfy employees as they feel valued and crucial for the organization. It is also an approach to attracting employees and retaining them in the organization while making them more productive and healthier.

Moreover, businesses need to get involved in employees' health coverage since they are in a better position to plan and seize employee payment before the employees spend the money on other activities. Allowing the employees to get paid and plan their medical coverage has resulted in low health coverage as only a few channel some payment into health care insurance. Thus, employers' involvement has supported high insurance coverage in the US since the population working, but the uninsured population has been converted to insured (eHealth, 2020). Thus, businesses have profoundly contributed to the increased healthcare insurance coverage, which could not have been attained without companies and organizations’ interventions.

A change of culture in the workplace has a consequent impact on impacting the employees and employees to adjust to the new culture until it becomes a deeply cored organizational culture. Mostly changes in culture are strategic changes needed to improve work productivity, enhanced work quality, or creating a conducive and healthy workplace environment. Creating a culture of business health coverage has an impact on improving the employees’ healthy lives while increasing their work productivity (Edington, 2009). A positive change of culture has an effect of positively impacting the organization and resulting in positive changes after the organization has fully adopted it. A positive culture change, such as a culture of involving employees in decision making or having a team working, will bring about the positive associated with culture change (Mierke & Williamson, 2017).

On the other hand, a negative culture change, such as disorderly management or high turnover, will result in negative impacts such as reduced work productivity and the organization’s low performance. The management ought to fix the gaps in workplace and culture and can reinforce a healthy culture in various ways, such as setting incentives for healthy choices. As per the Edington Engine, culture is an input factor that contributes to having a comprehensive evaluation of the organizational culture and environment (Edington, 2009).

In conclusion, businesses have helped in increasing health insurance coverage by having employer-sponsored plans to meet rising healthcare costs. This has the impact of creating a healthy culture and promote healthier workers and increased insurance security. Thus, to improve the organization’s performance and productivity, the organization ought to maintain only positive culture changes and eliminate the onset of negative cultures that lower an organizations’ performance.