The YMCA of Metropolitan Milwaukee and Sheboygan-based Health Solutions Ltd. have partnered to provide a greater value to YMCA corporate wellness programs.
Health Solutions will also refer its clients to the YMCA, said Pat Trotter, president of Health Solutions.
Health Solutions mainly focuses on its clients’ top risks, which are malnutrition and physical inactivity. Services offered include: biometric screening, education services and programs, personalized health coaching, annual goals and interventional programming, personal health management software, logistics and communication planning and advanced health risk assessments.
The YMCA currently works with 350 companies on a variety of levels to fulfill corporate wellness program needs, said Donna Bembenek, vice president of marketing and sales for YMCA of Metropolitan Milwaukee. Before partnering with Health Solutions, The YMCA mainly supported corporate wellness programs through its exercise programs, offerings and classes.
“It was natural for us,” Trotter said. “We love the opportunity to have this partnership. Our philosophy and our whole program is based on population management and that is trying to get large numbers of people to do many things over long periods of time that works with wellness in the population.”
The YMCA had been considering different partnerships when it settled on Health Solutions. There was a need for wellness programs to go from getting people active to actually affecting the bottom line of company health care costs, Bembenek said.
“Coaching is often times a really important piece to a long term health solution,” Bembenek said. “We have different kinds of coaching through the Y, but Health Solutions helped us expand.”
When companies sign on to the new, more robust wellness program of the combined efforts of the YMCA of Metropolitan Milwaukee and Health Solutions, employees take a health assessment, an environmental assessment and set up lines of communication with plans and logistics, Trotter said. The YMCA will also administer blood tests and wellness appraisals of employees, followed up by outbound coaching for one full year.
“We get everybody in the company involved 100 percent because the best return on investment includes keeping the well well,” Trotter said.
The partnership was formed about one month ago. The overall goal is to help employees attain a higher level of health and to help companies drive down their health insurance costs, Bembenek said. Health Solutions also hopes to bring as rich a wellness offering as it can to the community.
The partnership aims to make services available for people who have decided to change their lifestyle so that they have an easier time and full support system while doing it, Trotter said.
“Our goal and mission at the Y is healthier lifestyles and we look at that not just in physical fitness but in spirit, mind and body,” Bembenek said. “Our mission in participating in corporate wellness is we think companies can be important catalysts to help employees understand how to go about having a healthier lifestyle.”
