HealthWorks Wellness Check-up: How Kaiser Permanente NW identifies medical care gaps at the worksite

A robust worksite wellness program can provide a framework for improving employee health and reducing healthcare premiums. However, implementing worksite wellness activities that truly support and impact an employee's health is often challenging. Kaiser Permanente Northwest (KPNW) HealthWorks has developed an on-site worksite wellness tool that provides medically relevant and measurable outcomes. The HealthWorks “Care Gap Analysis” (CGA) is a unique and free service for worksites with KPNW members and serves to identify and close gaps in a member's care. The CGA supports a cost-effective worksite wellness program in which preventive care and disease management education is tailored to an employee's specific needs.

The worksite CGA involves a secure electronic medical record system (EMR), a medical assistant (MA) and a health coach. Through EMR review with the employee, care gaps are identified based on an existing condition or age and gender specific recommendations for preventive care. Care gaps are then closed through on-site care or by scheduling an in-clinic appointment. After the gap review, one-on-one health coaching is provided to support the employee's health goals. In 2011, 1200 KPNW members participated in 72 CGA events. A total of 1771 care gaps were identified during the events; and 1264, or 70%, of the care gaps were “closed” during the six-week post event follow up. The outcome data shows that, through a relatively simple and low-cost on-site wellness event, employees were moved to action to seek preventive care and/or improve disease treatment compliance where deficiencies had been identified.