Health Delivery System Case Study
Health Delivery System Case Study
A large, integrated health delivery system in the Mid-Atlantic partnered with HealthNEXT to transform its culture of health, safety, and wellbeing, achieving substantial gains in both assessment scores and workforce outcomes.
A Mid-Atlantic Health System at an Inflection Point
As a rapidly growing health delivery system in the Mid‑Atlantic region, the organization faced challenges in better identifying individual health risks and developing actionable plans, addressing chronic and complex conditions, and strengthening marketing and communications to promote vitality and connect covered lives with available benefits. Leadership partnered with HealthNEXT to apply a proven, data‑driven methodology for building a stronger culture of health and wellbeing across the enterprise.
Using the Employer Health Opportunity Assessment as a Strategic Compass
HealthNEXT began the engagement with the Employer Health Opportunity Assessment (EHOA), a comprehensive, evidence-based assessment that measures an employer’s maturity in creating a culture of health, safety, and wellbeing. The EHOA evaluates ten best-practice pillars—from leadership support and strategic planning to workplace environment, incentives and benefit design, engagement, and vendor integration—and produces a score on a 1000‑point scale.
A benchmark score is 700, indicating high-performing organizations that are successfully embedding health and wellbeing into their culture; a perfect score of 1000 reflects exemplary performance and best-practice execution across all pillars. By establishing a clear baseline and a prioritized roadmap, the EHOA helped this health system see where it stood, where it needed to go, and which actions would create the greatest impact over time.
Scaling Programs Across the Population Health Continuum
Guided by EHOA findings and HealthNEXT’s research-based playbook, the health system implemented a series of programmatic enhancements across the population health continuum:
- Strengthening prevention and risk reduction
The organization expanded annual biometric screenings, improving how results were aggregated and trended over time, and conducted annual health risk appraisals that were integrated with biometric data to identify common health risks and target interventions more precisely.
- Supporting chronic and complex conditions
The health system launched its first comprehensive diabetes program through a point-solution vendor and created an internal program to support individuals with complex comorbidities and high-cost claims, ensuring that high-need employees received more coordinated, proactive support.
- Embedding wellbeing into the work environment
To normalize healthy behaviors, the organization introduced health fairs, incentive programs, stairwell-use campaigns, and a robust calendar of lunch-and-learn events and convened its first health and wellbeing vendor summit to better align partners and reduce fragmentation.
- Connecting employees to primary care
A focused campaign encouraged employees to establish a relationship with a trusted primary care provider and complete an annual wellness exam, reducing the number of “medically homeless” individuals and strengthening the foundation for ongoing prevention and early intervention.
From Baseline to Breakthrough: Measurable Score Improvement
Over a five-year collaboration, the health system improved its Employer Health Opportunity Assessment (EHOA) performance from roughly one-third to approximately two-thirds of benchmark, an 86% gain from its original baseline. During this period, the score rose from 364 to 460—a 26% increase across three assessments—and the organization showed meaningful improvement in all ten best-practice pillars, with several more than doubling their scores, demonstrating a broad shift in culture, governance, and execution rather than isolated program wins.
Turning Data Into Direction: The Illness Burden Placemat™
To guide its investments and measure impact, the health system worked with HealthNEXT to enhance its data and analytics capabilities. The organization improved tracking of participation in key programs, medical and pharmacy utilization, medical cost trends, and aggregate health risk and clinical outcomes.
A central innovation was the development of an Illness Burden Placemat™—a visual tool that consolidated prevalent risks, chronic conditions, and diagnoses driving high-cost claims. This gave leadership a clear view of the organization’s health burden and helped prioritize initiatives that would most effectively reduce risk, improve outcomes, and support workforce resilience.
Evidence of Impact
A stronger culture of health, safety, and wellbeing has been shown to correlate with lower medical cost trends, reduced absenteeism and presenteeism, higher engagement, and better overall performance. For a health delivery system, these gains directly support safer, more reliable patient care and stronger organizational resilience.
As this Mid-Atlantic health system advanced toward benchmark performance on the EHOA, it saw:
- Moderation in medical cost trends
- Reductions in hospital admission rates and cost per admission
- Increased adult preventive care visits
- Improved employee satisfaction with health and wellbeing efforts
Employees reported a greater sense of commitment, and aggregate biometric and health risk assessment results improved, reinforcing the link between a healthier workforce and a stronger organization.
HealthNEXT’s Program: A Proven Way to Improve Employee Health and Wellbeing
For employers facing similar pressures, HealthNEXT makes these kinds of results repeatable. Using our research-tested assessment, we measure and score the health and safety of your workforce against a 1000‑point benchmark, so you can clearly see where you stand and what to do next. We then sequence the right projects in the right order, backed by proven best practices from high-performing organizations, to help you reach and sustain benchmark-level performance.
Unlike traditional consultants or brokers, HealthNEXT embeds an experienced chief medical officer as a strategic advisor to your team, helping you interpret data, pressure-test vendor performance, and translate clinical insight into practical next steps. You keep control and customization; we provide the methodology, roadmap, and expert guidance that reduce HR workload, improve data confidence, and moderate medical cost trends while strengthening retention, performance, and long-term workforce sustainability.
Merck Case Study
Building a Culture of Health and Wellbeing: Merck Case Study
A culture of health and wellbeing in the workplace fosters an environment where employees are encouraged to make healthy choices, both consciously and unconsciously. Reduced healthcare cost trends and marketplace out-performance have been associated with such cultures, as demonstrated through employee health assessment scores. Merck, a leading global employer, sought to develop such a culture to promote the health and wellbeing of its workforce, under the direction of Cathryn Gunther, by partnering with HealthNEXT for several years.
A validated and peer-reviewed case study detailing Merck’s journey to health and wellbeing, entitled “Building a Culture of Health and Wellbeing at Merck,“ was published in a major medical journal. The study was co-authored by HealthNEXT president Dr. Ray Fabius and researcher Dr. Sharon Frazee, and sheds light on the strategies employed by Merck to build a strong business case, collaborate with strategic partners, devise an implementation plan, and gain crucial support and resources from the C-Suite.
The case study is a valuable resource for employers looking to develop a culture of health in their organizations. It offers insights on various aspects, including:
- The importance of establishing a corporate culture of health and wellbeing in the workplace
- Strategies for developing a comprehensive and data-rich analysis of the current state of employee health and culture
- The need to increase awareness of available resources and track progress toward best practices
Benefits of Building a Culture of Health and Wellbeing in the Workplace
In today’s competitive marketplace, it is advantageous for employers to take a holistic approach to assessing and mitigating health risks in their workforce. Employers who build a culture of health and wellbeing in the workplace can benefit in several ways, including:
- Improved employee health and wellbeing, leading to increased productivity, reduced absenteeism, and lower healthcare costs.
- Increased employee engagement, leading to higher job satisfaction, improved retention rates, and a more positive workplace culture.
- Improved corporate reputation, helping to attract and retain top talent, as well as improve relationships with customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders.
Merck’s Implementation Plan
Merck established an implementation plan for achieving a culture of health and wellbeing using a structured approach. The first step was establishing two strategic imperatives: improving health status in targeted areas and establishing a workplace culture promoting good health and prevention by focusing on daily habits.
Once the strategic imperatives were established, the team followed these steps to create their implementation plan:
- Conduct a comprehensive analysis of the current state of employee health and culture: This includes gathering diverse data sets and identifying information gaps.
- Develop metrics and goals to measure impact: Including participation rates, program completion rates, satisfaction, and engagement levels.
- Build a business case to achieve alignment on the effort: Identify the benefits of building a culture of health and wellbeing in the workplace.
- Align strategic partners: Including HR, benefits, and communications teams, to ensure the program is integrated into the broader organizational strategy.
- Engage the C-Suite to garner support and resources: Including securing funding and resources to support the program.
- Develop an implementation plan: Including specific tactics and timelines for achieving the strategic imperatives, such as offering health screenings, providing access to healthy food options, and promoting physical activity.
Lessons Learned by Merck in Building a Culture of Wellbeing
The case study summarizes the beginning phases to augment a culture of wellbeing at Merck. Based on Merck’s experiences, here are some best practice tips for employers:
- Collect diverse data sets and identify information gaps to comprehend the health and wellness status of employees from different departments and locations.
- Conduct surveys to understand how employees feel about the benefits offered. Follow up the survey with empathetic responses and planned next steps to address their feedback.
- Establish a clear vision and business case for a culture of health and wellbeing, including the “why, who, what, and how” of the initiative.
- Develop an implementation plan to demonstrate operational excellence with specific goals, metrics, and timelines for measuring the initiative’s impact.
- Communicate and engage with employees and leaders to ensure buy-in and support for the initiative.
- Measure the initiative’s impact on employee health outcomes, healthcare costs, productivity, satisfaction, and overall organizational performance.
- Sustain investments in the initiative over time to ensure lasting benefits.
By following these best practice tips, employers can successfully build a culture of wellbeing that promotes employee health and wellness, improves organizational performance, and reduces healthcare costs.
Merck’s Evidence-Based Approach to Wellbeing
Merck’s efforts to build a culture of health and wellbeing yielded significant benefits for the organization. By establishing a clear vision and business case, Merck promoted employee health and wellness, improved organizational performance, and reduced healthcare costs. This was documented and achieved through collecting diverse data sets and actively engaging with employees and leaders. By demonstrating the implementation of an evidence-based approach in this case study, Merck expressed their goal of becoming a benchmark role model for employers seeking to build a culture of health and wellbeing.
HealthNEXT’s Program: A Proven Way to Improve Employee Health and Wellbeing
HealthNEXT’s culture of health and wellbeing program provides a customized assessment, roadmap, and guidance to help organizations improve employee health and wellbeing while reducing healthcare costs and providing a competitive advantage in the marketplace. HealthNEXT helps companies duplicate the results of this case study by providing access to over a decade of research and best practices, as well as connecting employers to experts – former corporate chief medical officers and other leaders in population health. These experts, known as “NEXTperts,” provide guidance and support to implement a strategic multi-year plan and create benchmark corporate cultures of health and wellbeing.
