SAN DIEGO, Dec. 17, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- American Specialty Health Incorporated (ASH), a national health and wellness company, and its subsidiary, Healthyroads, announced the expansion of its extremely successful Lifestyle Coaching program into a full Personal Health Coaching program -- which will provide integrated health improvement services to improve the health and productivity of populations and individuals. Condition Coaching, Lifestyle Coaching, and Life Skills Coaching services will be integrated through systems that produce measurable, sustainable, and transformational health improvement.
Healthyroads has provided Lifestyle Coaching and other health improvement programs since 2002. It currently covers 3.7 million members through contracts with 19 health plans and over 100 directly-contracted employer groups nationwide. Its expansion into Personal Health Coaching is in response to requests by clients regarding a current gap in health management programs. Healthyroads will continue to offer its current Lifestyle Coaching programs and health improvement programs as well as a full Personal Health Coaching program.
"Disease Management has struggled to deliver strong results due to a limited focus on member compliance and education; Disease Management systems have assumed members would respond to education and compliance efforts," said George DeVries, Chairman and CEO of ASH and Healthyroads.
"Integrated Personal Health Coaching delivers results because it combines the best of Disease Management, Lifestyle Coaching, and Life Skills Coaching with a focus on behavior change and motivational goal-oriented coaching. We understand there is more to creating change with individuals; each person in a population needs support, encouragement, accountability, knowledge, and motivation in order to take control of their health and make real sustainable improvement. It is these improvements that lead to improved quality of life and occupational productivity," he continued.
Effective July 1, 2010, Healthyroads will provide a comprehensive health improvement program, including Condition Coaching for diabetes, metabolic syndrome, congestive heart failure, back/spine pain conditions, asthma, COPD, hypertension, and heart disease. Healthyroads will continue to provide a best-in-class Lifestyle Coaching program for obesity, weight management, nutrition, activity/exercise, stress management, tobacco cessation, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, high cholesterol, hypertension, back/spine, and sleep. In addition, Healthyroads will provide Life Skills such as coping skills, stress prevention, work-life balance, and other services to support member efforts with managing health conditions and/or lifestyle challenges. All services will be provided through an integrated team of nurses, dietitians, personal trainers, exercise physiologists, and other health coaches.
"Our Personal Health Coaching program is unique because we focus on the illness, not the disease," said ASH Chief Medical Officer, Robert Crocker, MD. "When you focus on the disease and its physical aspects, you are simply educating members about their disease and compliance with medical requirements. When you focus on the illness, you are focused on the entire person and their bio-psycho-social experience of the disease. The focus is on empowering the member to take control of their life and disease, and take responsibility to manage their condition or lifestyle challenge. We also provide the education and medical compliance, but success with personal health change requires so much more," he continued.
In addition, Healthyroads will provide a broad, integrated health improvement program to support Personal Health Coaching including:
1) Workplace and Employee Benefit Strategies including:
* Health and Wellness Consultants to assess workplace health
culture and to support plan sponsors with creating an annual
"health and wellness plan" to promote healthy behaviors,
health program initiatives, and a "culture of health."
* Engage! Creative Group, a proprietary service offered by
Healthyroads to create customized and standard award-winning
member engagement promotions to encourage participation in
health initiatives and to motivate members to manage their
own personal health.
* Fit Company Awards, an awards program offered by
Healthyroads to acknowledge plan sponsors who are leaders in
health improvement.
* Value-Based Program Designs to support improvement of health
outcomes and reductions in cost.
2) Identification of Moderate- and High-Risk Individuals using:
* Health Risk Assessment, or Healthyroads' Personal Health
Assessment, to empower members to better understand their
own health and to take steps to improve their personal
health.
* Biometric Screenings, which include workplace blood tests,
BMI and waist measurements, and blood pressure measurements
to provide potentially life-saving early detection and
identification of at-risk individuals.
* Medical Claims and Pharmacy Data Analytics which will
identify members at high-risk with chronic illness.
3) Member Engagement through:
* Outreach, which provides a dedicated team to outreach to
moderate and high-risk individuals to encourage, motivate,
and persuade them to participate in Condition Coaching,
Lifestyle Coaching, or other available interventions.
* Self-Referral, which allows members to self-refer for
Personal Health Coaching, and other interventions and
services.
4) Population-Based Interventions using:
* A Fully Customizable Web Portal, which provides population-
based intervention with a broad range of online tools,
including: personal health assessment (HRA); fully portable
personal health record; fitness/wellness tools such as
cardio and resistance planners, meal/nutrition planners,
online coaching courses, wellness/fitness trackers, and
others.
* Wireless Connected provides a market leading population-
based intervention in integrating devices including wireless
accelerometers, heart rate monitors, blood pressure monitors,
weight scales, and other devices. All data is collected and
wirelessly transferred to Healthyroads.com where it is fully
accessible by the member and their personal health coaches.
The service also provides verification of health activities
for incentives.
* Competitive Challenges, which provide a population-based
intervention encouraging employees within a corporation to
challenge and compete against one another in health
activities, or for groups of employees within a plan sponsor
to compete against each other, or for different plan
sponsors to compete against one another. They may design
their own challenge or use a pre-designed challenge.
* Incentives, which provide a population-based intervention
that enables plan sponsors to implement incentives to
motivate a broad range of healthy behaviors and activities.
5) Individual Interventions, including:
* Lifestyle Coaching, providing individual interventions to
motivate and support members to improve their personal
health through the creation of sustainable, transformative
health behavior change that results in weight reduction,
increased activity/exercise, tobacco cessation, effective
stress management, and other measurable outcomes.
* Condition Coaching, providing individual interventions to
motivate and support members to take control of their health
behavior and lifestyle to improve their compliance with
their physician's medical orders.
* Life Skills Coaching, providing individual interventions to
assist members with obtaining the skills necessary to more
effectively cope with health challenges, to make healthy
changes in daily habits, and to take action to protect their
health.
"Our Health Improvement and Personal Health Coaching programs are comprehensive, fully-integrated, and flexible," said Dr. Doug Metz, ASH's Chief Health Services Officer. "They are designed to engage members and provide them with the tools, services, encouragement, and motivation to make and sustain change in their personal health. We view members as consumers instead of patients. We believe it is our responsibility to engage, encourage, persuade, and motivate our members to participate and keep them engaged in personal health improvement activities and personal health coaching."
About American Specialty Health and Healthyroads
American Specialty Health Incorporated (ASH) is a national health and wellness company that provides health improvement programs, specialty network management programs, and fitness and exercise services to health plans, insurance carriers, employer groups, and trust funds. Based in San Diego, ASH has more than 700 employees and covers over 15.6 million members.
Healthyroads, Inc. is the health improvement subsidiary of ASH. Healthyroads offers a wide range of personal health solutions -- including award-winning telephone-based personal health coaching programs, member engagement promotion programs, incentive management programs, competitive challenges, worksite wellness programs and its integrated online health improvement portal, Healthyroads.com.
For more information about ASH health and wellness programs, visit www.ASHCompanies.com or call 800.848.3555.