Health and wellness programs to expand beyond the Beltway
Personnel chief tells lawmakers he would like to set up health centers to serve federal facilities nationwide.
Senators focused on federal employee health and retirement programs during a Wednesday hearing on the Office of Personnel Management's fiscal 2011 budget.
OPM Director John Berry has requested $7 million to begin collecting data on the well-being of Federal Employees Health Benefits Program enrollees and the effectiveness of federal health programs.
"We should have the best health database in the country," he told Sens. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Susan Collins, R-Maine., during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government. "We leave enormous opportunities on the table right now for cost efficiencies, what the needs of our population are. It's a substantial investment so we can actually begin collecting information about our employees' health benefits program …so we can know where our weaknesses are and where our possible cost savings might come from."
Berry said the agency would expand its program to set up comprehensive health and wellness centers at federal agencies, adding locations nationwide. He opened a renovated health center serving OPM, the General Services Administration and the Interior Department at OPM headquarters in January. He told the lawmakers that he had issued a request for proposals for health care companies to provide a wide range of screening services to agency employees.
The goal, he said, was to replicate productivity gains that private sector companies have made by instituting on-site wellness programs. Berry said he had a team working with leading companies to replicate their best practices, and that the new centers would be geographically distributed to make sure that OPM could collect good data on their effect on employee health.
Durbin asked Berry to consider not only the health of federal employees, but recruiting programs for federal health care workers. One solution he suggested was assigning active or retired federal registered nurses to training programs under the Intergovernmental Personnel Mobility Act, and asking them to encourage young nurses to join government once they complete the programs.
Berry said he also hopes to add 40 full-time employees to OPM's retirement processing efforts.
"We had started decreasing our staff under the expectation there was going to be a new system," Berry said of the agency's stalled retirement systems modernization effort. "We're not going to have that system."
In addition, Collins urged Berry to consider how best to improve OPM's long-term care program so enrollees would not be surprised by sharp increases in their premiums. Many were caught off guard last year after a new contract hiked fees, even though promotional materials had suggested the initial rates were guaranteed. Berry said it was important not to impose restrictions that would prevent vendors from bidding to provide coverage, but noted he was sensitive to the plight of employees who were upset about the premium changes.
He also told Collins, who pressed him on the subject, that his office had identified an offset he believed would pay for extending benefits such as health coverage and relocation payments to the partners of gay and lesbian federal employees. But Berry said he did not want to provide details too early, because he did not want to see those cost savings diverted to another program.
"I'm loath to put that offset out there for fear a larger tiger might take it away for another purpose," he said.