Word: amica
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Paradoxical, maybe, but effective. Consider Amica Mutual Insurance, based in Rhode Island. Amica seemed to be doing everything right: it boasts an on-site fitness center at its headquarters. It pays toward Weight Watchers and smoking-cessation help, gives gift cards to reward proper prenatal care and offers free flu shots each year. Still, in the mid-2000s, about 7% of the company's insured population, including roughly 3,100 employees and their dependents, had diabetes. "We manage risk. That's our core business," says Scott Boyd, Amica's director of compensation and benefits. But diabetes-related claims from Amica...
...behavioral psychologists from Abacus Employer Health Solutions advised Amica to create a separate wellness program for its diabetic employees, based on their specific needs and unique barriers to care. Today Amica covers all co-pays on necessary diabetes drugs but only for patients who attend five key annual preventive-health checkups, including an eye exam and a foot exam. Within eight months of the program's launch in 2008, about half of Amica's diabetic employees were enrolled. It was a win-win situation: members had saved nearly $35,000 in out-of-pocket expenses, and Amica's health-care...
...people. "To get a high-risk, overweight, four-pack-a-day smoker to change behavior, it's going to take a whole lot bigger incentive than for a 22-year-old who's healthy as a horse," says Bill Sims, president of an eponymous behavior-change consulting firm. Amica's diabetic employees weren't tempted by a subsidized gym membership. But they did respond to a plan that focused on behaviors they could manage and that offered appropriate rewards--free meds--to reinforce them...
...Amica Mutual, Boyd awaits the forthcoming results of employees' health-risk assessments, conducted last fall with high staff participation, thanks to a program that allowed workers to take medical tests on-site. Boyd asks, "What are some of the other chronic conditions our employees have? Do they need to work on cardiovascular? Depression? Asthma-type issues?" Whether it's a persistent illness or a failed New Year's resolution, maybe a well-placed nudge can help get them back on track...
Eileen Kennedy, a contributing editor of ArtsMedia Magazine, a journalist and a painter, discovered Arts Amica while reviewing one of the group’s shows in Hyde Park, Mass. During extensive visits to Cuba as a journalist, Kennedy began to paint and exhibit her work there. Through her interaction with the artists, she learned that they are exceptionally skilled in graphic artwork like that of “Petroleo...