Medical Solutions: SOAP-ing Your Wellness Program? - The "A" of SOAP

Hello again. For those of you who have been following the “SOAP-ing" series over the past few weeks, thanks for reading. This week finds us at the “A” of the SOAP-ing process. A stands for Assessment. Simply defined assessment is the act of making a judgment about something.1 A workplace health assessment helps to identify the current picture of health at a company as well as ways to improve it that can potentially increase productivity, decrease absenteeism, and control health care costs for both employees and the organization as a whole.2 It is a necessary first step before goals are developed, resources allocated, strategies adopted and interventions implemented.

Now don’t let the definition of “workplace health assessment” overwhelm you. To put it more plainly, we are going to rinse the “SOAP” off the pieces of the puzzle of your employee health status and get a really good look at all the information that you have collected. Up to this point we have been gathering the pieces of the puzzle, the pieces being the subjective and objective information. Now, we can put the puzzle together by assessing the information.

Are you starting to feel like you would rather take a nap?

Not to worry, this is where you will get the information you need to move forward. Let’s not forget why you are doing all of this. Your goal is to develop a comprehensive employee wellness program that will have a measurable impact on your workplace.

In order to do this, it is imperative that you understand your employees’ current state of wellness as well as what impacts the health of employees at work. This is the core of what assessment is all about. According to the Center for Disease Control some key questions you may want to consider as you evaluate your information are as follows:

1. What are the key health issues affecting employees?
2. What factors at the work site influence employee health?
3. What are the employees’ health and safety concerns?
4. What strategies are most appropriate to address these health issues?

So where should we begin? If you are like many, all of your subjective and objective information has been recorded on paper. Argh! Now what? Well, somehow this paper-based information has got to be processed into a usable report. In most situations this requires labor and time intensive effort by ..you? Argh! What? You don’t like setting up spread sheets or retrofitting information into a generic data base? Me neither, but if you are going to put this puzzle together, this information has to be transformed into reports so that you can see the whole, clear and accurate puzzle picture. Additionally, the accuracy/focus of the picture begins to fade the more time it takes to get these reports.

So here we are, several weeks into reading each installment of this “SOAP” series hoping for a tangible way to go about putting together a really great workplace wellness program and it all boils down to this, the tedious task of processing information? You’ve got to be kidding me! Right now, buying apples for the break room sounds better than ever! I know, I know. Don’t give up. Remember the cliff-hanger? There is a solution.

What if there was a completely digital process for collecting biometric (objective) information? What if there was a completely digital process for collecting customized subjective information? What if that same system could generate reports in real time from that collected information? What if those reports were saved and the information could be tracked from one workplace assessment event to another year over year? No more time spent trying to read someone’s handwriting for data entry. No more inaccuracies in reporting due to human error. Now that would be something right? Surprisingly, there is only one such system that can accomplish all this and it has been developed right here in Indiana by Telamon Corporation. The solution is called statwatch.

Statwatch is a mobile application that simplifies employee health assessment and biometric screening. Statwatch is comprised of two components: stat and watch.

Stat is a tablet-based version of the boring old paper forms. Watch serves as the central repository for all the information gathered. Watch provides real-time reporting access so that a business can quickly identify health trends and respond. No more manual processing of information - saving time, money and your sanity. Thank goodness there is a solution!

To complete your assessment, you will need to review your reports to look for trends. As mentioned previously , the type of trends that you are looking for will be specific to your particular business. Next, an assessment report can be written identifying the most concerning trends and prioritizing them based on health and/or safety risk.

As a result of gathering Subjective information in the form of customized questions specific to your business, Objective information through biometric screening (blood pressure, pulse, blood sugar, etc.) and Assessing the reports generated from your information gathering, you are now ready to begin making a Plan to impact your workplace/employee wellness.

Next week: The “P” of SOAP

1  (Merriam-Webster dictionary.com)
2  (www.CDC.gov/workplacehealthpromotion/assessment)