King County Healthy Incentives^SM Initiative Toolkit

Introduction

King County created Healthy Incentives^SM in 2005 to stop its health care costs from increasing at unsustainable rates. Through improved health of employees and use of higher quality health care, the county has reduced the rate of its health care trend from 11% to 6.2%, avoiding $46 million in costs. Engagement has been at or above 90 percent since the program began. Participants have lost 19 tons more than a national comparison group and the smoking rate has dropped below the national average from 12% to 5%.

Healthy Incentives^SMis a catalyst for improved employee health that curbs the use of costly health care. It also works to improve the quality of health care in the region through a region-wide collaborative, thus reducing ineffective and costly treatment.

The program launched in 2005 and results are very positive. As a result, King County receives numerous inquiries about how our program is designed, the impacts and the lessons we have learned along the way. This toolkit is designed to answer these and many more questions.

This toolkit features:

•  Healthy Incentives^SM Overview 


• Why King County created Healthy Incentives^SM


• Design of Healthy Incentives^SM 


• Healthy Incentives Benefit program


• A work environment that supports employees' efforts to get healthy


• Puget Sound Health Alliance, a regional approach to containing health care costs


• Partnership with labor


• Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between management and labor on Healthy Incentives^SM


• Joint Labor Management Insurance Committee, an ongoing partnership overseeing the program


• Powerpoint presentation on partnership between management and labor 


• Employee outreach strategy 


• Measurement and evaluation of program 


• For more information