Screening for Chronic Conditions During Wellness Programs? A Case Study.

Abstract

PurposeScreening for chronic conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol during a voluntary wellness program visit.DesignObservational study based on secondary data collected between 2000 and 2017.Setting and sampleData included 4876 visits from 2309 unique participants, all employees of an academic institution in United States.MeasuresWe leverage clinical guidelines to define criteria for classifying a patient as susceptible, or not, to a chronic disease.AnalysisWe perform descriptive statistics and logistic regression to quantify the association between patient characteristics and their susceptibility to chronic conditions.ResultsThe prevalence of susceptibility for diabetes is 17.03% (18.29%) for one-time (frequent) participants, for high blood pressure is 44.76% (48.27%), and for high cholesterol is 8.97% (7.33%). The risks of diabetes and high blood pressure increase with age, and all three risks increase with BMI. Being female is associated with a lower risk of diabetes and high blood pressure. Race is generally not associated with a higher risk of chronic conditions, except for high blood pressure. We also find that each of the three risks is positively and strongly associated with the other two.ConclusionOur study provides evidence that wellness program checks can serve as viable screening opportunities for alerting participants when their health exhibits concerning signs associated with chronic diseases.