September 3rd, 2024 | 2 min. read
More than 30 million Americans live with diabetes —96 percent of which have been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides diabetes education and estimates that a third of Americans over the age of 18 have prediabetes. What do these numbers look like in your workplace?
The American Diabetes Association’s estimates that for a company with 1,000 employees:
The cost for employees with diabetes is astronomical, and continues to rise. The American Diabetes Association found that costs for an individual employee with diabetes soars to $9,601 in direct expenses and $3,640 in indirect expenses. This is an opportunity for population health improvement – and it starts in the workplace.
At Marathon Health, we’ve found that patients identified with diabetes that utilize their employers’ onsite health center cost 39 percent less than diabetes patients that are not engaged with the onsite health center. Let’s explore how employers can reduce the risk and cost for diabetes within the workforce.
Diabetes Self-Management services are a great place to start. Did you know that nearly nine out of ten adults may lack the skills needed to manage their health and prevent disease?
The American Diabetes Association considers Diabetes Self-Management services to be a cornerstone of care. They recommend that every patient with diabetes receive diabetes education to gain knowledge, skills, and guidance to manage this costly and often debilitating condition. However, only 57 percent of patients with diabetes have had access to these types of services in their lifetime. We’ve got work to do.
At Marathon Health, we offer Diabetes Self-Management Services at our worksite health centers to remove as many barriers to care as possible. The following three barriers are easily addressed with worksite diabetes management programs: