Putting Choosing Wisely “Front and Center”
Since many people contemplate health care choices while reviewing their workplace benefits, Choosing Wisely partner Consumer Reports is looking for ways to incorporate their patient-friendly Choosing Wisely materials into those systems.
About a year ago, Mary Jane Konstantin, senior vice president of Ceridian LifeWorks, a human capital management technology company, learned about Consumer Reports’ efforts during a conference for HR professionals. She thought information from the Choosing Wisely campaign would be a valuable addition to LifeWorks, a comprehensive employee-assistance work, life and wellness program that helps organizations improve employee health and wellness, increase employee engagement and improve productivity.
Employers incorporate LifeWorks.com into their intranets and employees access the site with a login and password. About 45,000 employer groups and 35 million people in the U.S. use the service.
“LifeWorks is a resource that employees turn to,” Konstantin said. “We have over a million visits to the site each year. Many people are looking for information about health.”
Through a license agreement, Consumer Reports’ content from Choosing Wisely and other campaigns is now disseminated through Ceridian’s broad network.
Ceridian recognized the value of the nearly 400 Choosing Wisely recommendations and 100 patient-friendly brochures from Consumer Reports and specialty societies, but the company knew patients were probably only interested in issues relevant to their individual conditions.
To help users locate the specific content they were looking for, Ceridian worked to make Choosing Wisely resources searchable.
“When someone searches for a test, procedure or medication, we have articles, videos, toolkits and other items that will populate the search results,” Konstantin said. “We worked to make sure that anything tagged Consumer Reports appears prominently, so evidence-based Choosing Wisely material is front and center.”
LifeWorks features dozens of Choosing Wisely resources, and more are being added each month. While Ceridian has yet to compile data on how often those resources are being accessed, Konstantin has heard anecdotal evidence that employees are finding the information to be helpful.
“It’s important that if you need information, you can find it easily,” she said. “Choosing Wisely is a great way to provide more background to anyone who wants to learn more about health issues. We want it to be a destination for employees.”
