Worker Productivity | Blood Pressure Evaluation Measures

Worker productivity measures for blood pressure screening and control^1-11

Healthier employees are less likely to call in sick. Employees with multiple heart disease and stroke risk factors such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol cost employers more in terms of medical care, absenteeism, and lost productivity than employees with one or none of these risk factors. Companies can sometimes assess sick day use to determine whether health programs are increasing worker productivity.

Baseline

• Individuals with high blood pressure may be absent more often than individuals with normal blood pressure or those who have their blood pressure under control (e.g., with medication). Measure the average number of sick days for individuals with high blood pressure, over the previous 12 months
• Chronic high blood pressure can cause heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and blindness. Companies can measure the average number of sick days related to these complications of high blood pressure, per employee, over the previous 12 months. For example: ◦What are the average number of sick days due to diagnosed heart attack (total number of sick days due to heart attack divided by total number of employees)
  • What are the average number of sick days due to rehabilitation after stroke
  • This measure may be less useful if there has been a large increase or decrease in numbers of employees over the past 12 months
• Determine costs for worker absenteeism related to high blood pressure and its complications such as heart disease, including costs of replacement workers, costs in training replacement workers, and lost and delay in productivity
• Determine the time employees spend during working hours participating in blood pressure screening worksite programs or lifestyle programs that can control high blood pressure such as physical activity, nutrition, alcohol use, stress, type 2 diabetes, and obesity
• Additional validated surveys have been developed to provide employers with information about the indirect costs of untreated or undertreated employee health issues such as high blood pressure. Employers who use these health and productivity surveys on an ongoing basis can begin to evaluate the return on investment (ROI) of offering blood pressure screening and control programs on employee absence or productivity. These surveys may be proprietary and may require a modest fee to use. Two examples are provided below: 
  • Health and Work Performance Questionnaire (HPQ) is a short, easy to administer self-report survey designed to estimate workplace indirect costs (absenteeism, reduced productivity, and injury due to accidents) of employee health problems developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Harvard Medical School
  • The Work Limitations Questionnaire (WLQ) developed by the Health Institute at Tufts Medical Center is an easy to use questionnaire that addresses general work limitations which can be built into other health assessment tools such as a health risk appraisal or employee health survey

Process

• Re-assess the average number of sick days for high blood pressure and its complications per employee at the first follow-up evaluation 
  • If employee education programs are successful, these measures may increase in the short term as screening and detection rates increase
• Periodic repeats of other baseline measures
   

Outcome

• Assess changes in the average number of sick days for high blood pressure and its complications per employee in repeated follow-up evaluations
• Assess changes in time employees spend during working hours participating in blood pressure screening worksite programs or lifestyle programs that can control high blood pressure
• Assess changes in costs from baseline