Newswise — Poor health among workers is far costlier to U.S. employers than they realize, impacting their profitability and undercutting the nation’s overall productivity, according to a major study published this week in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM).

The multi-year study of 10 organizations employing more than 150,000 workers indicates that employers who focus only on medical and pharmacy costs in creating employee health strategies may misidentify the health conditions that most impact the productivity of their employees – while underestimating the impact of other factors.

One such factor, “presenteeism,” occurs when employees with health conditions are present at their jobs but are unable to perform at full capacity. The study closely examined the effects of presenteeism, concluding that impaired employee-performance typically creates a greater drain on a company’s productivity than employee absence – a finding which could come as a surprise to some employers.

The study also found that when considering medical and drug costs alone, the top five conditions driving costs are cancer (other than skin cancer), back/neck pain, coronary heart disease, chronic pain, and high cholesterol. But when health-related productivity costs are measured along with medical and pharmacy costs, the top five chronic health conditions driving these overall health costs shift significantly, to depression,

obesity, arthritis, back/neck pain and anxiety.

The study suggests that many employers miss an opportunity to improve productivity and their bottom-line results by failing to recognize and prioritize these health conditions when they develop integrated employee-health strategies and related interventions.

The study, coordinated by the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM), the Integrated Benefits Institute (IBI), and Alere LLC (formerly Matria Healthcare, Inc.) is one of the largest of its kind to date. Research was conducted via the Alere Center for Health Intelligence and funding was provided by the National Pharmaceutical Council.

Other highlights of the study:

• Health-related productivity costs are significantly greater than medical and pharmacy costs alone. On average, every $1 of medical and pharmacy costs is matched to $2.3 of health-related productivity costs – and that figure is much greater for some conditions.

• Co-morbidities – employees with multiple chronic health conditions -- drive the largest effects on productivity loss. The study calls for further research to better evaluate the impacts of co-morbidities by conditions and combinations of conditions.

• The impact of poor health on productivity impacts all levels of an enterprise. Executives/managers seem to suffer high presenteeism productivity-loss related to specific health conditions along with those in non-managerial jobs.