why do 90% get checked? Is there a credit or something for going ? My company gives a $500 credit to your healthcare cost so a lot of people follow through.

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"I think I've cracked the code. double letters are cheaters except for perfect squares (a, d, i, p and y). So Leddy isn't a cheater... "

It's voluntary and takes $100 a month off your health insurance cost. You can attend the on site fair or you can get a form filled out by your GP during your annual physical. Most people go to this since it is simple and you get paid while you are there. I had my annual physical in May but I did this so the paperwork would be filed automatically.

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

That's my definition of a bad day!

only when using the rubberized hands free probe

How else is he supposed to keep me from squirming around ?

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"I think I've cracked the code. double letters are cheaters except for perfect squares (a, d, i, p and y). So Leddy isn't a cheater... "

I'm surprised you have access to this information, usually due to confidentiality laws they keep that sort of stuff under pretty tight wraps. Even if de-identified there could be the risk of revealing private health info.

Actually I don't have access to any data. Who goes is protected (but no secret) and there were 8 stations behind curtains so no one saw anything. During my "evaluation" the nurse laughed and said "I win, first person all green." No knew who she was with, and no one had a way of knowing who had already been seen.

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

So the nurse has told you that anyone who went that morning has some marker of metabolic health that puts them at increased disease risk. So now if you find out (or you tell your coworkers this info. and they find out...) a person went before you that morning you know something about their health that they may not want you to know. It will almost certainly never lead to anything but it's one of those examples of health care workers not being as careful as they should be regarding protected information.

Having done this for a living, I can speak to your concerns. Almost always, when someone comes in, they know that they are overweight (therefore outside of the boundaries for perfect results), which leads to a cascade of other health-related consequences. It's not as though it's a secret that they're in the shape they're in and nobody knows. Outside of wearing a burka to work, everybody can see how you look.

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DFL > DNF > DNS

So you are saying that Americans are fat and unhealthy, and everybody agrees.
Interesting.....

Nice backdoor brag ;-)

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

My best Dr. visit story involves a hernia check in college.

There was a day for all NCAA athletes to get their annual physicals. So I was in a long, long line of athletes waiting. Then a young, female Dr. approached me out of nowhere, basically skipping like 20 guys in front of me, and said she had just arrived to help out, and would take care of me. I shrugged apologetically to the rest of my team, and she took me away from where the other nurse/Dr. stations were set up. And the private part was weird. I thought she spent waaaay too long on the hernia check, almost caressing my scrotum, like 15-20 seconds, which felt like minutes. I had to dig super deep into dark, dark places to avoid having a "response." Which at age 19 can happen like 80 times per day for no reason.. But I managed. I left in a sort of what-just-happened-there daze.

It could all be a delusional Dr-gone-wrong fantasy fabrication of a teenage mind. But it's just etched in my memory that something was way wrong. And the skipping ~20 guys is straight-up factual.

Sadly, it's been all downhill since that. Fingers up the ass by a male Dr. is not fertile ground for Dr.-gone-wrong fantasies.

No they don't. They impose a $500 penalty if you don't. They aren't giving you anything. Wellness programs have not produced any increase in healthfulness or decrease in health care costs. But employers know that a non-insignificant number of people will fail to complete it and the penalty will produce a pretty decent yield.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

Yep, on top of that, these 'field tests' are fraud with errors and inaccurate at best and you are always given the disclaimer that this is not a medical exam...go figure.

He didn't say the nurse told him he was the first that wasn't fat. And yes of course there is connection between body fatness and those markers of metabolic health but it's far from a one to one correlation. There are many obese people who are metabolically healthy and many normal weight people who are unhealthy, about 25% for both, it's about 50/50 for overweight people. So the nurse very well was potentially revealing information about people that wasn't readily apparent just by looking at them.

I get one every year through my work wellness program and that bit must be in the small print, I've never been told that. My cholesterol, blood pressure, blood glucose numbers seem to be fairly consistent. I mean they vary but in general are always in the same ball park whether it's at the wellness check, doctor's office, or when I got lab values from blood draws.

A friend of mine has an incentive at work where if you're using a fitbit to track steps you get a certain amount of money put in a health savings account. You can apparently skip the whole process by showing that you've done a 5k race in the past year.

"What about an Ironman?" He replies

"We'll have to look into that"

(He did get the credits in the end but he found the disconnect between the level of activity they're trying to incent vs what he was in fact doing already)

I'd suggest you might need to lighten up.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

My wife had a similar incentive, but instead of money, you would earn points based on the number or steps you took in a day. The prize was a weekend getaway, and the more points you got, the higher chance you had at winning. My wife, who is a daily runner, and a nurse (on her feet all day) racked up more points then the highest half of other participants combined. We thought that was quite funny, and disturbing to see how little most people move around in a day. Of course, we didn't win the prize, some fat ass who only participated in the contest for a few days did.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

X2

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DFL > DNF > DNS

It's in large part because of the potential for employers to use that information to discriminate against employees or in hiring practices. So imagine in the scenario here that the OP was the supervisor of a department and was aware of which of his employees were tested that morning and unhappy with rising health insurance costs at his place of employment he decides he's going to get rid of all the unhealthy ones by giving them bad reviews, making their life hell, etc.

And yes there's nothing to stop anyone from talking about their own health woes or anyone else's as long as they didn't obtain that information in the role as a health care provider, then there is a problem.

No idea I was being so heavy.

LOL. I'm the Plant Manager :)

You don't need a health fair to figure out things like that. Just look around the production floor, monitor the smoking areas, and review sick call ins. It isn't rocket science.

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

We have a similar program -- earn points for activity, points just for getting the metabolic screening done, more for being in each healthy category range, points for doing races with a sliding number of points based on distance, points for the completion of various quizzes, points for various "challenges" during the year, etc. There's a bronze, silver, gold, and platinum level, with wellness dollars being paid if you hit the silver level and the points can also be used for merchandise, gift cards, or charitable donations. I was at silver in Jan, gold in March, platinum in May, trying to double platinum by end of year now. As easy as it is to hit silver, I'm constantly amazed that managers need to send out reminder emails in mid-Oct through mid-Dec to make sure their employees hit the minimum threshold. It's a big chunk of cash for doing something quite minimal that I'd do anyway (work out, move my ass, get my health markers reviewed). The only real pain in the ass is uploading workouts, but it syncs with my Garmin account, which now syncs to my phone as soon as I'm done with a workout, so still pretty simple.

My wife's company also has a wellness program, but it's not as cushy as mine. It does, however, extend the metabolic screening to spouses with the same incentive as the employee receives, so I just got a $75 Amazon gift card out of that for 15 minutes of my time.

Sure for a lot of people that's true but on the other hand, lots of people have unhealthy cholesterol levels or hypertension and look perfectly healthy.

We have something similar but it's not all that great. I'm too lazy to bother entering the contests even though I do the stuff anyway. I just use the annual wellness screening to get my cholesterol numbers checked.