Investing actively in your health is critical to your personal and financial wellbeing. Your health is truly your most valuable asset. If you understand that your health is your most valuable asset, then you might wonder:  “how do I actively invest in it?”

If you are to be financially successful, you know that you must work hard, budget and invest to enjoy and improve your life and lifestyle. With any financial security asset, investment of time, effort, and money are all keys to your success. The same is true when it comes to your health. Improved health, healthcare and healthcare security requires your active effort, taking direct responsibility for your improved health, healthcare spending management, healthcare risk management and healthcare savings.

Healthcare spending is budgeting time, effort and money (daily) for healthcare expenses whether it is taking time to exercise, watch your diet, follow your prescriptions, renewing a gym membership, buy healthier foods, etc.  

Risk management is as important for your health, healthcare and healthcare security as it is in managing any other investment. We buy home owners insurance to protect our homes, auto insurance to protect our cars. In this context, medical insurance plays an important role, however like our home and auto insurance it is also only one element of the risk management process. Homeowners insurance doesn’t increase the value of your house; it does not create greater personal and financial wellbeing. You must first and foremost, take care of your assets through active management and daily investment.

A critical requirement of personal and financial wellbeing is saving for the future. This is also true with your health, healthcare and healthcare security. Your individual savings accumulated for the payment of future healthcare services when a healthcare need materializes is very important, to your personal and financial security.

If you do not save money for the future whether it’s in your 401(k) plan, personal checking account or even in the equity of your home, the prospect of someday retiring comfortably is lost. And if you do not save for your future healthcare expenses, your future security and retirement plans could drastically change. The average spent, by age 70, of retired Americans on healthcare is almost 50% of retirement income—this makes saving specifically for your future healthcare vitally important to your future personal and financial wellbeing.

Thinking of your health as the critical financial asset; it is a cultural change and a life changing idea. It is a change that is not easy, but acting upon this realization is essential for maintaining and improving your health, healthcare and your financial security. 

Invest in you, by investing in your total health.

During its first full year, (from 2007-2008), Asset Health has established a strong adoption in the market place, answering the demand for Knowledge Management, health care comprehension and leadership in creating vibrant health-centric cultures of employee direct and active responsibility.

In the first quarter of 2008, Asset Health has shown continued momentum. Over this period Asset Health users have taken over 30,000 courses focused on consumer centric and health care behavior/physiological content. In accordance with their set engagement efforts employers have seen much success.

An employer who elected to implement a single tier employee engagement strategy and set of rewards for completing Courses/tests, experienced over a three month period a jump to over 25% participation. Another employer who has successfully implemented a more progressive and comprehensive communication and engagement strategy over a six month period saw 60% of its population actively taking Asset Health Courses. Though effective engagement strategies differ from employer to employer, success has been dependent on a combination of creative reward applications, message-driven leadership and focused communication efforts.

Adopting employers are also progressively moving toward ‘required’ status. Where Asset Health Courses and testing compliance are adopted as a requirement of plan eligibility or a requirement for various additional plan benefits. Many of these employers are starting with requirements for new hires.

Asset Health’s product continues to keep pace. We are expanding our library of courses and we are adding additional functionality to continuously improve our client applications and the employee experience. Look for these and other upcoming enhancements coming soon:
•  User Surveys
•  Health Community
•  All new Spanish version

If you are interested in how Asset Health answers the question “Why” and how the Knowledge Management process drives employee culture, please click here to view the services we offer. After all, your health is your greatest asset. Asset Health drives comprehension and employee direct and active responsibility.

Sincerely,
David and Robert Wilson
248.822.4000

When we discuss health insurance the conversation immediately goes to the management of cost. Health insurance’s sole purpose is the financial management of the cost and strictly the cost of illness. While important, if health insurance and risk management are the sole points of reference for the healthcare debate our solutions are narrowed significantly and improperly focused. we simply end up solving the wrong problem. 

Let me ask you, why do American’s care about the state of healthcare in this country? The answer is so intimate to our nature that it is often taken for granted. Americans care about the healthcare debate because they care about their health. Shouldn’t health then be the focus of the healthcare debate?