Six steps for establishing a successful health promotion program.
Well-designed health promotion programs meet a variety of long- and short-term hospital commitments to: 1. Hospital employees. For hospital employees, making health promotion part of the strategic plan puts the hospital in a leadership posture, serving as a role model within the community. 2. Businesses. Health promotion helps decrease health care costs and impacts favorably on the bottom line by increasing productivity through a reduction in absenteeism. 3. Medical staff. The time a physician spends getting a patient to lose weight or stop smoking is generally not cost effective. However, offering health promotion programs gives the physician a "prescription" that can be issued to patients allowing more productive use of physician time. 4. Community residents. Offering health promotion activities to community residents can only improve the health of the entire community. As one hospital administrator stated in a conversation with the author, "When they walk in the front door for a health promotion program and have a positive experience with a quality program, we know that they, their friends, neighbors and business associates will all think of us at other times." 5. The Board of Trustees. Dr. William L. Weis, C.P.A., an associate professor at Seattle University estimates that an organization's "annual cost per smoker" represents a loss of approximately $4,611. Offering health promotion programs provides an excellent way to aid the hospital's cost containment and productivity efforts. Should health promotion activities be part of your strategic plan? By utilizing the six phased-in steps outlined here, it is possible to maximize the opportunities while minimizing the risks typically associated with starting up a health promotion program.
D006293:Health Promotion / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006761:Hospitals; D008389:Marketing of Health Services / Q000379:methods*; D009786:Occupational Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration; D014481:United States