Blue Promise: Health Coaches at Work

Does your employer have an onsite coach that helps employees get and stay healthy? In this episode of Blue Promise, Dr. McCoy discusses the concept of an Embedded Wellness Coordinator.

Blue Promise is an online video blog that aims to address complicated health issues with candid conversations from subject matter experts. New editions are published regularly and are hosted by Dr. Dan McCoy, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas' Chief Medical Officer and Divisional Senior Vice President of Texas Market Strategy.

Show Transcript

DAN: Hello, and thanks for joining us on Blue Promise. I’m Dr. Dan McCoy. I’m here today with one of my great friends, Cindy Johnson. Cindy, what do you do here at Blue Cross?

CINDY: I’m a VP for the Health Care Management area. I’m responsible for the clinical programs that we offer to our employers and our employees.

DAN: So one of those programs I want to talk about today is this idea of an embedded wellness coordinator. So what’s that?

CINDY:: For our employers who are interested in having an onsite person available to their HR leadership for the purposes of developing internal wellness initiatives, that is a position that an employer would be interested in purchasing from us.

DAN: But what would this person do? So if they’re on site at an employer I mean are they like wearing a jogging suit to work or what are they doing with that employer?

CINDY: Well, they obviously have a professional appearance. And they will change their clothing based on the events that are scheduled. So if there’s something that calls for wearing your jogging suit because you’re doing some Rah! Rah! thing with the employees then they’ll do that. They are working mostly from a planned curriculum that they’ve agreed to with the employer group that they’re supporting to provide initiatives, and those initiatives within the employer space could include having onsite flu vaccinations taking place during the season. It could include having a vendor come in and do blood draws and assessments to identify people who are needing to work on some of their health issues.

DAN: So I guess part of the theory here is, is that the employer’s work site is a natural environment or ecosystem to help educate people about wellness.

CINDY: Exactly, Exactly, and it shows the employer’s commitment to their employees to make a difference with health and wellness.

DAN: And we do that with employers all across the state.

CINDY: We do. We have several employer groups that have purchased that service and are extremely satisfied with them. We get constant praise and information from the employer groups that they are making a difference with their employees.

DAN: Well, I’ve been excited about it because it seems to me that what people learn at work and particularly information, that they can take that home to their families.

CINDY: That’s exactly right.

DAN: So it’s not just isolated happening at workplace wellness, but is also helps the wellness of the families and the members we serve.

CINDY: That’s right, it does.

DAN: Well, thank you for joining us today and thank you for joining us on this episode of Blue Promise.

BCBSTX Connect Team

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