Is there someone in your workplace whose health is so suspect that you don’t expect they’ll live long enough to collect their Canada Pension?
You know the type. Overweight. Bad sleeper. Works long, intense hours. Eats poorly. Is winded walking in from the parking lot.
They likely have a few other things going on too – diabetes, hypertension, a family history of cancer, and so on.
You’d like to shake them, tell them to smell the roses before they’re pushing up daisies.
But too often it’s the boss who’s playing Russian roulette with his body, a person who can’t be told anything.
It’s the type of person that a unique Calgary company, The Personal Health Planning Institute, hopes to reach. Formed by an established physician, psychologist and chiropractor, the institute offers a service that spends six to seven hours evaluating each patient, and then puts the client on a program to rectify short- and long-term health issues.
“Our goal is to see this business grow, but truly we’d like to see a tremendous amount of competition come on line in the next 20 years,” says Dr. Peter Gant.
It’s an interesting statement, considering the startup company only opened its doors last October. But Gant, Dr. David Peterson and Dr. Randy Johnson sincerely hope that this is the genesis for a significant shift in our approach to health planning – that it becomes an integral part of our lifestyle, just as we hire financial planners to help us plan for retirement.
“We have people who don’t bat an eye spending all sorts of money on the health of their pets, will add accessories on their cars to the tune of $5,000 or $10,000, but won’t spend money maintaining themselves,” says Gant.
Peterson explains that the institute – located in the Chinook Centre Professional Building – offers three types of packages, ranging in price from $1,400 to $3,000. Typically, clients will spend about two hours filling out questionnaires days in advance of a battery of tests that last four to five hours and include medical, biomechanical, physical fitness and lifestyle analysis. A week after the tests, the client meets with Gant, Johnson, Peterson, a nurse and a kinesiologist to discuss the assessment and develop a health plan. Followup work and consultation is part of the package, and the institute consults with, and provides information to, the client’s personal physician according to his or her wishes.
“We’re not trying to take anyone else’s patients away,” says Gant, who notes that 70 per cent of premature deaths and hospital stays could be eliminated through proper health planning.
“We have had individuals come in who have never known what their cholesterol or blood sugar (levels) are, or don’t know they have an early form of diabetes, what we call insulin resistance. These can have a devastating impact on their health in the long run.”
Gant, Peterson and Johnson stress that today’s health-care system is based on a curative, or crisis approach. They say most family doctors, while well-meaning, spend five to seven minutes with a patient usually addressing a specific problem, but seldom, if ever, look at the whole person.
In the workplace, Peterson believes that companies can dramatically improve business, especially by helping key executives.
“When a top executive has to be replaced (because of health reasons), the cost for corporate searches, the time to bring a new employee up to speed, can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says.
In addition, healthy workers are simply more productive, lose less time to absenteeism and are a positive influence on the entire workforce. Overall, the costs to the health-care system drop as well.
“We are trying to show that when they invest in their employees’ health, they are investing in their bottom line,” Peterson says. “The employee is more productive, and feels valued by the company because it’s an investment in him, it’s not totally work-focused, and will help the employee enjoy his or her quality of life and improve their longevity.”
Because it’s not financially practical to put every company employee through one of its programs, the institute is developing a worksite wellness plan to identify staff at risk, those who need a proactive health-planning program.
Currently, program costs are covered by the individual, a company and occasionally through a health insurance plan. The institute is also working with insurance companies and has a submission in to Health Canada.
Peterson has been surprised to find how many local companies have invested in expensive health plans based in the U.S., because there is no Canadian alternative.
To date, about 70 patients have been assessed at the institute. Clients range from 18 to 100 years old, the latter a “gentleman working on a five-year health plan.”
The majority of clients have been in the 40- to 55-year-old age group.
No one has been dragged in kicking and screaming, Gant says, though two men were escorted by their wives.
“They left feeling that they’d benefited,” he says. “They were grateful.” Two local companies have had upper-management staff assessed, and are now sending other key people, adds Gant.
In the 70 screenings, two people were found to have potentially catastrophic heart problems that are being addressed, while another required immediate surgery for a growth that was detected on his kidney.
Some clients want to affirm that they are on the right health track, while others realize they are headed for trouble.
One client, a developer under significant stress and overweight, booked himself in three months ago as his birthday present to his wife.
“I’d say he’s lost 25 pounds since then, and he feels so much better,” adds Peterson. “We addressed his diet, and it wasn’t really that much of a change. We just cut out the daily Cokes, the junk food and some of the other bad things. And we made suggestions about exercise and his workload.”
Peterson explains that once people understand the need for personalized health-care planning, and are shown the steps they need to follow, a light goes on.
He says that many patients can relate to the following analogy he uses:
Imagine, he says, that when a person turns 18, he or she is given a car. It’s a great car, but the only catch is that it’s the only car they can have for the rest of their life.
“Does that change how you’d take care of that car?” he asks. “Of course it does. You’d make sure to keep it properly maintained.”
We have only one body. And it’s by far our greatest asset.
Shouldn’t we plan to take care of it?
Web Watch:
www.phpi.ca
