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W W W. M A I N E B I Z . B I Z 13 F E B R UA R Y 2 2 , 2 0 1 6 C huck Hays, president and CEO of MaineGeneral Health Services, the state's third-largest health care system, has no trouble explaining why it's good business for employers to take a proactive role in helping their workers stay healthy. He's got MaineGeneral's Workplace Health department as an example. Per-employee paid health claims for the system's 4,300 employees have been lower than expected since 2008, with 2014's $8,451 cost actually being lower than 2008's per capita cost. Its most recent workers' compensation MOD rate, a measurement of its workers' comp experience, was 0.47, less than half the 1.0 average rate for hospitals. Employee benefi t costs have not risen for three years. But for any stubborn skeptics who might wonder how paying attention to workplace health might work in a riskier, more challenging industrial setting, Hays says that before there was even a shovel in the ground for MaineGeneral's $312 million hospital that opened two years ago, the medical center tapped Workplace Health to provide medical services at the Augusta con- struction site for upwards of 700 construction workers. "It saved us almost $1 million in insurance costs as we were building the hospital itself," he says, noting that the department installed a medical trailer onsite, where emergency medical technicians could quickly assess all construction-related injuries and complaints and provide immediate fi rst aid — or send work- ers with more serious injuries to its Augusta offi ce for further assessment and treatment. at proactive approach helped the project's insurance loss ratio come in at 9.8% — far less than the 29% that had been projected for a construction project involving a 640,000-square-foot building. In addition to the direct impact it's having on the health of hospital employees, Hays says the Workplace Health department is proving to be an "incredible asset to MaineGeneral and our desire to help the people we serve stay healthy and well." e Aff ordable Care Act has played a role in that mission, he adds, by expanding coverage for many prevention and wellness services, including incentives for employers to provide wellness programs. e business case for proactively investing in healthy employees, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is based on the fact that 75% of health care costs is spent on preventable diseases. "With the shift of health care, in general, dealing more with 'wellness,' Workforce Health has shifted more of its attention to that realm as well," Hays says. "We think wellness is the direction health care needs to travel — for everyone, not just for workplaces. I will tell you, though, I don't think any of our companies would take our Workplace Health service if they weren't see- ing a return on the bottom line themselves." Tackling workers' comp A for-profi t center within the MaineGeneral system, Workplace Health currently works with 250 businesses in the Kennebec Valley region that collectively employ roughly 20,000 workers. Helping employers improve on-the-job safety was the department's primary mission when it was launched more than 20 years ago in response to Maine's 1992 workers' compensation reforms. But that focus has evolved into the broader mission of assisting companies create wellness programs for their employees as an eff ective way of reducing their overall health care costs. "I run it like a business," says Denise Dumont- Bernier, a physical therapist who was recruited to run the department following a long career in occupational health that included stints providing onsite health care at L.L.Bean and Bath Iron Works. e department's profi t, she says, helps the parent organization provide health care to populations that can't aff ord to pay for it fully on their own Chuck Hays, president and CEO of MaineGeneral Health Services, says the hospital's teaching kitchen is in constant use by instructors demonstrating how to prepare healthy and tasty meals. F O C U S C O N T I N U E D O N F O L L OW I N G PA G E » P H O T O / T I M G R E E N WAY MaineGeneral leads the way in workplace wellness B y J a m e s M c C a r t h y health, business Good good business good business

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