Health Fair Blood Pressure Screenings

• Neck & Back Screenings
• Foot & Ankle Screenings
• Vision/Laser Vision Screenings
• Dental Screenings
• Massage Therapy
• Physical Therapy Screenings

Comprehensive events also include educational wellness exhibitors from the following three areas:

• Employee Health & Stress Relief
• Personal Fitness, Health & Stress Relief
• Family Fitness, Health & Financial Wellness

Health Fairs Direct offers a FREE educational session on Mothers to be Nutrition . Ask our representatives about this important free session available at your event.

By bringing in resources to help your employees learn about and deal with issues that may come up in their personal and family life(s) you will help to ensure that they will be able to focus on any task at hand while they are in the office. There is nothing more distracting than an employee with personal problems be it financial, family or health related. Keep these distractions down to a minimum by well rounded health & wellness events.

Health Fairs Direct also offers certified training in the following areas:

• Heartsaver CPR: Designed to teach CPR and foreign-body airway obstruction (FBAO) to all lay rescuers, particularly those who are expected to respond to emergencies in the workplace.
• Heartsaver AED: A comprehensive course for the first responder. It is designed to teach CPR, use of an automated external defibrillator (AED) and the relief of foreign-body airway obstruction (FBAO) to all lay rescuers, particularly those who are expected to respond to emergencies in the workplace.

Enhance your health fair with Health Fairs Direct's large variety of Optional Fee-For-Service items, including:

• Blood Pressure Screenings*
• Body Fat Screenings*
• Cholesterol Screenings
• Glucose Screenings
• Paraffin Hand Treatments
• Skin Damage Screenings
• Identity Theft Programs
• Discounted Health Club Membership

*These screenings might be available at no charge through one of our medical exhibitors.

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Corporate Health And Wellness Programs

Corporate health and wellness programs are a relatively new industry and it is only in recent years that Corporate America has taken an active interest in the long-term health and wellness of their employees. Starting in the late 1980’s, however, a few doctor’s offices began to offer corporate health fairs and lectures as a way of gaining new patients for their practice. Most of these doctors did not participate as in-network providers through the insurance companies so they used local corporations as a creative avenue to get new patients. They offered educational lectures and screenings to corporations to create more demand for their services among the employees. In turn, they could grow their business with clients who they knew had top of the line, out-of-network, medical insurance benefits.

The initial growth of the corporate health fair industry was slow due to the relationship between doctors and corporations. Since doctor’s offices were using corporate health fairs as a way to grow their business, the company’s internal event planner (usually Human Resources or the Corporate Nurse) began to see more and more employee complaints about high pressure sales tactics as well as expensive and confusing out-of-network billing from the doctor.

Many corporations coordinated their own events by inviting the doctors that they used personally. This was not the best solution as the internal coordinators would select doctors based on personality or availability because they simply did not have a lot of time or expertise to properly screen the doctors. Obvious conflicts of interest, such as the appearance of kickbacks and exhibitor favoritism, turned many corporations away from coordinating their own events. Then followed the lawsuits for implied endorsement when an employee had malpractice issues from the doctor which was personally invited to the event by the corporation. As a result, many corporations stopped offering health fairs because the problems simply outweighed the potential benefits.

With a shrinking number of corporations willing to host a health fair directly with a doctor’s office, these out-of-network doctors once again had to get creative to gain access to the corporations. This eventually evolved into what is currently known as the health fair industry. Several national non-profit corporate wellness companies were established for the sole purpose of selling memberships to doctors. With this membership a doctor could hire a marketing representative to contact corporations as a member of the nonprofit so as to cloak the conflict of interest that had caused so many problems in the past.

In addition to the non-profit memberships some doctors created their own health fair companies. This way the doctor’s office could market themselves as ABC Health and Wellness Company as opposed to “Dr. Joe’s Office”. In some cases, the doctor’s wife would market to corporations using her maiden name to mask the conflict of interest that had banned them in the first place. This allowed them to avoid any non-solicitation policies of corporations. Of course, the doctors still had one thing in mind; filling their waiting rooms with corporate employees. HR professionals then had to deal with the complaints and thus chose other options to promote wellness to their employees.

Independently-Owned Health Fair Companies Change the Industry

Unlike a doctor’s office, an independently-owned company views the corporation as their main client and is not interested in selling personal services to the employees. Independent companies have much higher standards, and will not hesitate to “fire” an exhibitor if they do not live up to these standards. With the advent of independently owned health fair companies, corporations finally had the option to host a health fair where their needs came first.

Some of the many benefits of working with an independently owned health fair company include:

1. Customized events
2. Non-solicitation policies are enforced
3. Prescreened exhibitors
4. Protection from implied endorsement from Doctor Owned Companies
5. 100 % in-network medical exhibitors
6. Reduction in medical insurance premium increases

Due to this shift over to independently-owned health fair companies, corporate health and wellness fairs began to become more popular. The reason for this is quite simple. The independently-owned health fair company’s focus aligns with the corporation’s desire to lower their medical insurance premiums by making employee’s healthier. This created a trusting relationship between the health fair company and the corporation; something that is rarely accomplished with doctor-owned companies. As a result, corporations began to see more benefits than complaints from their health fairs.

The Benefits of Health Fairs

With health risk assessments, unbiased preventative screenings, in-network exhibitors and a true focus on employee health and wellness, corporations began to increase their demand for health fairs and corporate wellness events. The reasons for this are different for each corporation, but here are some of the primary ones:

• Employers began to realize that healthy employees:

· Tend to be more productive

· Tend to be happier and more satisfied with their job

· Have more energy and stamina

· Tend to be more creative

· Are less distracted and have better focus on their jobs

• Employers also began to realize that healthy employees cost the company less money because of:

· Fewer sick days

· Less medical claims with fewer new illnesses

· Decreased long-term medical costs as a result of fewer chronic illnesses

· Less lost production time from distracted employees

Just like anything else, corporations want to make sure that they are not financially harming themselves or their employees with health fairs. They realize that when their health fair provider uses out-of-network exhibitors it increases their overall insurance costs. As out-of-network doctors are not as closely regulated by medical insurance companies, they bill five to ten times more for a single service than in-network doctors. This extra cost to the medical insurance company is then passed onto the corporation as part of the next year’s premium. This then defeats the purpose of holding health fairs as they are supposed to decrease or slow premium growth, not increase it.

Know the People with Whom You Are Working

Fortunately, there are many things that corporations can do to ensure they are dealing with a high quality, independently-owned health fair company.

1. Find out who you are working with by finding out who actually owns the health fair company. If they are up-front and tell you that they are a doctor’s office then you should determine if that is the best fit for your organization. If you find out that they are a doctor’s office who is pretending to be a health fair company, then you have to decide if you want to work with a group who is not being up-front about their intentions.

2. Insist that every medical exhibitor is 100 % in-network with your insurance plan (or the program that the majority of your employees participate in if there are options). Find out how the health fair company plans on guaranteeing this, and make sure that you get this in writing. It is better to be safe than sorry. Remember that “Accepts Your Insurance” or “Will Work With Your Insurance Plan” is not the same as In-Network.

3. Consider the long-term financial impact that could be obtained through proper health and wellness programming. Make sure to design an event that has a “preventative” and “wellness” component to it and to stress taking personal responsibility and action toward living a healthier lifestyle.

4. Make sure your health fair provider is independently insured with liability and errors and emissions policies to help insulate your liability.

5. Make sure you are working with a well established health fair company who has a track record of successful events. They should have a minimum of 5 years experience and provide over 100 health fairs per year. Ask for references and call them.

6. Only work with a full service corporate health & wellness event coordinator. A group who can only do a limited number of services will try to steer you toward those services only.

How do you know if you are working with a doctor-owned health fair company? Many doctors will offer free screenings up front because they stand to earn thousands of dollars on the back end through your medical insurance. Here are the warning signs:

• Free glucose and total cholesterol screenings.
• Free ½ hour massage for every employee who attends or who comes in for an initial medical visit.
• Free lunch. (Have you ever heard of a free lunch that is actually free?)
• Limited number of services. (Pre packaged events.)
• Ability to schedule a health fair with less than 4 weeks’ notice.
• Will only work with companies having ‘good’ medical insurance (meaning PPOs and not HMOs).

Health fairs can be fun, educational and can be done at very little cost. Most companies charge an administrative fee and then fees for various services and activities along with a host of free services. Depending on the population they can be held for a half day or a whole day and can be an integral part of your firm’s overall employee benefits and wellness objectives. Activities can include paraffin wax treatments, fruit smoothies, martial arts, aromatherapy, yoga, pilates, and massages which are fun and healthy and which your employees will love as well as flu shots, cholesterol, bone density, pulmonary function and skin damage screenings, family fitness and health sessions, vitamins and toxic free household products.

Corporate health and wellness programs are much more advanced than they were 10 years ago. With more corporations taking the proper steps to ensure the best health fair possible for their employees, this is sure to hold true as the industry continues to grow.

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For more Health Fair Ideas Call
732-563-9749 x0 or email at

healthfairdesign@healthfairsdirect.com

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Health Fair Direct's corporate offices are located in New Jersey and New York, NY. Most of our health fair, flu shot, employee health program and employee wellness events are in New York City, NJ, CT and other major US cities.