Hospital chief tries to lead wellness push by example

USA Today reports on Margaret Sabin, CEO of Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, who is leading, by example, the employer wellness movement to make employees healthier. "Something of a renegade in her line of work, she believes hospitals — all in the medical community, in fact — are applying too little attention and resources to prevention. 'We can project exactly what will happen to an individual living an unhealthy lifestyle,' she says. … 'But prevention — which is cheaper and better — is rarely emphasized,' she says, and almost never paid for by insurance." Sabin helps teach a fitness aerobics class and has led many of her employees to lose weight. "All the attention on health improvement has not upended her operations, Sabin says. In fact, in the past year, the hospitals' bottom line has improved, employee morale is up, patient satisfaction numbers rose, and market share grew" (Peters, 9/19).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.