Depression can be tragic for its victims and a significant cost to employers. These are the facts:
- Mental health disorders, of which depression is the most common, account for an average work time lost of 13 hrs per week
- Depression affects more than 20 million Americans each year
- Approximately $50 billon is spent on depression each year
One glimmer of hope does exist – depression management programs
result in approximately 40 percent cost savings on future health
costs. Lost workdays, compromised productivity and accidents from
lapses in judgment are all symptoms of depression. It is absolutely
clear that depression poses a severe threat to business productivity
and financial stability. Depression's tendency to be coupled with
other diseases results not only in increased health-care costs, but
employee absenteeism, reduced productivity and
lessened presenteeism on the job. In order to combat these
effects, health plans and employers are implementing
depression-management assistance for their members and employees.
Depression-management programs have been shown to minimize the
multifold effects of depression through comprehensive care management,
while reducing the overall costs of health care. However, there are
several challenges to identifying the at-risk population and developing
an appropriate management program.
How do you effectively identify those workers who are suffering from
depression, and how can you successfully engage them in
disease-management intervention? How can you effectively quantify the
value of your program and calculate your return on investment? Finally,
how do you work with providers and primary-care physicians to ensure
the delivery of a cost-effective and efficient program
for depression management?
World Research Group's Disease Management for Depression Summit in Boston on November 15-17, 2006
will showcase specific answers to these questions. It will outline
what leading health plans and employers are doing to implement
depression-management programs and focus on mental wellness. At this
unparalleled, must-attend conference, attendees will learn the value of:
- Leveraging depression management to improve employee health and well-being
- Calculating savings that result from early-stage depression intervention
- Engaging and educating patients to give them control over their treatment
- Working with primary-care physicians to improve the quality of care
See a High Return on Investment for Your Depression-Management Program While Achieving Better Health Outcomes
The distinguished faculty of this conference will showcase how:
- Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan developed a comprehensive model to treat comorbid depression
- HIP Health Plan of New York engaged providers across settings and created incentives for cost-effective care delivery
- PacifiCare Behavioral Health expanded its web-based services to access a larger population
- Wachovia Insurance Services developed successful strategies to identify, develop and treat employee depression
- General Motors created metrics to assess depression in the workplace
- Wausau Benefits identified and stratified members based on a depression survey
9 a.m. - 12 p.m. Workshop A
How to Improve the Proactive Management of Depression: Practical Strategies for Mental Health Disease Management
Depression can be tragic for its victims and a significant drain on
business profits and the national economy. Research suggests that
depressive illness occurs when people who are genetically vulnerable to
depression are subjected to demands and pressures beyond their capacity
for accommodation. The key to the effective management of depression is
identifying root causes. This workshop will help attendees develop
strategies to identify the upstream drivers of depression, and will
discuss the levels of proactive intervention.
This hands-on, interactive workshop will provide practical take-home
lessons. Attendees will learn how to develop and position their
depression-management program strategically. Learning objectives
include:
- The prevalence and costs of depression
- The biological relationship between stress and depression
- How to identify the upstream drivers of depression
- How to deal with depression on an organizational level
- How to come back from depression
About Your Workshop Leader:
Lyle H. Miller, PhD is the Director of the BIOBEHAVIORAL INSTITUTE OF BOSTON and cofounder of STRESS DIRECTIONS.
Dr. Miller has dedicated his professional life to the study, treatment
and analysis of behavioral health issues in modern society. He has
published more than 100 articles and books on the proactive
management of behavioral health disorders such as depression.
For more information on the Summit, visit http://www.worldrg.com/showConference.cfm?confcode=HW698
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