Creating a successful business by having a healthy
staff is a strategy that more and more Canadian companies are adopting.
A meaningful program of health
and wellness is not only the new way of attracting and retaining top talent. It creates new feelings of
loyalty and motivation. This is particularly true when health programs extend to an employee’s family, and
medical problems are either dealt with quickly — or avoided altogether. Today, more and more people are
receiving the benefit of premium health services from their organizations, delivered in beautiful settings by
teams of expert doctors and professionals. The traditional, annual “executive medical” has given way to
comprehensive, ongoing medical care with a completely different standard of service.
However, when it comes to real
return on investment, comprehensive health programs are designed to optimize the performance of staff through
physical and mental wellness, while substantially reducing the cost of disabilities, drug claims, absenteeism
and presenteeism. Numerous studies show that for every dollar invested in employee health and wellness, the
“hard” financial returns are somewhere between $2 and $6.
Presenteeism is the largest
single concern of the modern organization. This is when staff members are showing up for work, but their
minds are elsewhere due to any number of psychological stressors.
According to a recent study by
the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
(CAMH), mental
health issues alone cost Canadian companies an estimated $51 billion per year. That is a whopping 19 per cent
of profits overall. And that is just mental health. According to the Canadian Diabetes Association, that
disease alone could add another $5 billion to that bill.
More companies are getting this
message every day. Copeman
Healthcare,
one of Canada’s leaders in the private delivery of health services, is fast becoming a key player in a
movement within the corporate world that could transform the Canadian health-care
landscape.
“In this highly competitive
world, compromising performance by not attending to the physical and psychological welfare of staff is no
longer an option for many companies. With the return on investment so high, the demand for high-quality
private health services is rising sharply,” says Don Copeman, founder of Copeman Healthcare.
According to Copeman, it is a
situation where everyone wins. Executives and other staff members are now getting health care delivered at a
standard that rivals anything available in the world. Organizations are lowering risk and getting great
financial returns on the investment, and all Canadian taxpayers are benefiting because these programs are
having a meaningful impact on the health and wellness of people, which reduces the financial burden on public
health-care services.
This transformation could
eventually move the Canadian health-care system towards European models of medicine. These models generally
provide their citizens with better overall health care at a lower per capita cost. Many European countries
fund the overall health care of its citizens through a combination of corporate and public funding
mechanisms.
The Copeman Healthcare Centre, with locations in downtown Calgary and Vancouver
(and an Edmonton location opening soon), has fast become one of the most respected names in private
health-care delivery within the country.
Now, it has developed new
programs and services for companies that can quickly turn previous tax expense into competitive
advantage.
“We have a nice tax program in
Canada that incentivizes companies to invest in such programs,” says Copeman. “The money that companies spend
on health care is an expense to the business and a tax-free benefit to their staff, so the true cost of
investing more heavily in health is effectively discounted. When a company sets up a proper health spending
account system, the range of services that can be offered is very wide indeed.”
At the Copeman Healthcare
Centres, the range of services offered includes unhurried medical care delivered by expert doctors and other
professionals. Their on-site staff includes psychiatrists, psychologists, brain health clinicians,
dietitians, physiotherapists, exercise specialists, nurses, coaches and other specialized health-care
workers. Medical specialists in numerous areas contribute their skills to disease-specific clinics. Everyone
works collaboratively and the clinic can be described as operating like a Swiss watch, even though the
overall feeling is one of calm, comfort and small-town friendliness.
Each client at the Copeman
Centres receives lifelong care from a team of people whose skills, expertise and focus are matched with their
profile. At a minimum, everyone is assigned a personal family physician, a registered dietician, a
kinesiologist or exercise specialist, a care co-ordinator, and a nurse that helps provide ongoing coaching
and support. Adults are charged for the service, but children are registered for free.
Copeman says the Centre’s
approach will have a dramatic long-term effect on the overall quality and sustainability of public health
care while meeting the market demand for premium health-care services.
“When you personalize health
care, provide timely access to professional expertise, and give people the time and attention they deserve,
you save lives and prevent disease. That saves the system huge amounts of money in the long term. It’s that
simple,” he says.
At Copeman Healthcare, over 50 per cent of people that arrived in its
first year had an undiagnosed medical condition or a significant health risk they did not understand. Other
companies that perform annual assessments on executives report similar findings. However, until recently, few
medical organizations, if any, have dealt with the ongoing care of people or delivered more complete programs
of risk reduction and disease management.
“Ongoing care and guidance was
the first hole we had to fill,” says Copeman. “But the biggest hole was meeting the psychological health
needs of people. You simply can’t reduce people’s health risks if you’re not addressing the stress and other
emotional issues in their lives. These are generally the biggest obstacles on the road to longevity and
wellness. These issues are what drive high-risk lifestyles.”
Copeman adds that their in-house
psychological health centre is what originally drove the demand for their new corporate health offerings.
Most organizations have had to rely on conventional employee assistance programs, which usually offer only
limited professional services that are not well co-ordinated. At the Copeman Centres, programs for major
issues such as anxiety and depression bring together counselling, clinical psychology, psychiatry,
neuropsychology and coaching in a collaborative setting. This approach is what gets great results, according
to its founder.
The Copeman Healthcare Centres
are also the first primary health-care clinics in the world to include brain health as an integral part of
care.
“We now know that we can choose
how powerful our brains will be,” says Copeman. “We can preserve brain health and prevent or delay the onset
of dementing conditions like Alzheimer’s disease. This is a long-overdue component of total health
care.”
He adds that the Centre’s
approach seems to represent the type of innovation that is desperately needed in Canada right now. Rather
than just creating an “out of pocket” service that everybody wants but only a few can afford (fees for a
comprehensive health program at the Centre run to almost $3,000 per year, per adult), the company has shaped
its offering to meet the needs of companies that have a vested interest in the health of their people. In
addition to premium health services to help companies manage risk within their top talent pool, it has
developed sophisticated computer technologies to monitor the health of entire employee populations at very
low cost. The company is also working on other lower cost services, such as group and Internet-based
psychological counselling, to meet the entire spectrum of needs within a large
organization.
The result of the efforts of
companies like Copeman
Healthcare is the creation of willing corporate partners who can help fund the gap between basic
and highly-effective health services within Canada. And that means that many more of us can look forward to
this type of advanced medical service in the future.
Health-Care
Options
Some of the services
Copeman Healthcare offers its clients
• Unhurried, 24-7 health
care
• Personal family
physician
• Expert, collaborative teams
including dietitians, kinesiologists, psychologists, physiotherapists, neuropsychologists, nurses, medical
specialists and others
• Annual comprehensive health
assessments including advanced disease screening
• Exhaustive efforts for fastest
possible specialist treatment, including presentation of all options (public and private)
• Advanced online health
management support and personal health records
• Flexible, convenient
appointments
• Calm and comfortable
surroundings
Photo
Courtesy: Copeman Healthcare Centre
