Illinois Wellness Study: A Field Experiment on Participation Incentives and Selection into Workplace Wellness Programs

奖项摘要美国几乎所有的大公司都提供工作场所健康计划，这些计划被广泛吹捧为改善员工健康和降低医疗成本。《平价医疗法案》包括多项鼓励使用健康计划的条款，进一步扩大了政府对健康计划的支持。尽管它们越来越受欢迎，但几乎没有严格的证据表明这些计划对健康或分配影响的因果影响。此外，许多公司发现，要在员工中获得高参与率是一件具有挑战性的事情。这个项目旨在提高我们对工作场所健康计划的理解。研究人员将分析一项随机研究的数据，以估计财政激励对计划参与的影响；调查谁从这些计划中受益；并估计这些计划对医疗保健成本、利用率和工人生产率的影响。这项研究的结果将为旨在提高美国医疗保健提供效率的政策提供参考，并通过这样做来改善美国人的健康和加强美国经济。本研究项目继续进行PIS正在进行的关于工作场所健康计划有效性的研究。研究小组将在伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校设计并实施一项实地实验。研究人员将随机将一些员工分配到治疗组，这些员工将有机会参加高质量的工作场所健康计划，其余的则分配给控制组。该项目还将随机向治疗组员工提供不同的金钱激励。在该项目的这一扩展中，PIs将引入额外的一年健康干预措施，并在最初研究两年后跟踪结果。将收集治疗组和对照组的结果数据(医疗保健成本、医疗保健利用率和劳动生产率)。然后，研究人员将通过比较治疗组中选择参加该计划的员工和选择不参加该计划的员工，来估计该计划的分布影响。最后，绩效指标将通过比较治疗组和对照组员工的医疗成本、利用率和生产率来评估该计划的两年因果影响。治疗组内不同的货币激励措施将允许估计各级激励措施的反应弹性。这项研究的结果将有助于美国医疗保健政策的有效发展，从而加强美国经济。

Award Abstract Nearly all large firms in the U.S. offer workplace wellness programs, which are widely touted to improve employee health and reduce health care costs. The Affordable Care Act has further expanded the government's support of wellness programs by including multiple provisions encouraging their use. Despite their growing popularity, there is little rigorous evidence available on the causal effects on health or distributional impacts of these programs. In addition, many firms find it challenging to obtain high participation rates among their workforce. This project seeks to improve our understanding of workplace wellness programs. The researchers will analyze data from a randomized study to estimate the effect of financial incentives on program participation; investigate who benefits from these programs; and estimate the effects of these programs on health care costs, utilization, and worker productivity. The results of this research will inform policies aimed at increasing efficiency in the provision of health care in the US, and in so doing, improving the health of Americans and strengthening the U.S. economy.This research project continues the PIs on-going study on the effectiveness of workplace wellness programs. The research team will design and implement a field experiment at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The researchers will randomly assign some employees to a treatment group who will be given the opportunity to participate in a high-quality workplace wellness program, and the rest to a control group. The project will also randomly offer different monetary incentives to employees in the treatment group. In this extension of the project, the PIs will introduce an additional year of the wellness intervention and track outcomes two years after the initial study. Data on outcomes (health care cost, health care utilization, and labor productivity) will be collected for both treatment and control groups. The researchers will then estimate the distributional effects of the program by comparing employees in the treatment group who choose to enroll into the program to those who choose not to enroll. Finally, the PIs will estimate the two-year causal effect of the program by comparing health care costs, utilization, and productivity among employees of the treatment group to employees in the control group. Differential monetary incentives within the treated group will allow for the estimation of response elasticities at various levels of incentives. The results of this research will contribute to the efficient development of health care policy in the US, thus strengthening the US economy.