For benefit advisors, onsite primary care can be a strong part of an organization’s health strategy. It gives employees convenient access to preventive care, chronic condition management and other services without requiring them to leave work. But even the best primary care model has a limit. A provider may have 20 or 30 minutes with a patient. What happens between those visits can have just as much, if not more, impact on long-term health. This is where health coaching can be a useful supplement.
Health coaching picks up where onsite primary care leaves off. Primary care providers diagnose conditions, recommend treatment and help employees understand what they need to do to manage their health. Health coaches can help employees turn those recommendations into everyday habits.
That may mean helping someone follow a plan to manage diabetes, build more physical activity into the workday, improve nutrition, manage stress or stay on track with medications. Instead of waiting for the next appointment, employees have another resource they can turn to when they are struggling to make changes.
Research supports this approach. Studies have found that health coaching can improve physical activity, self-management, quality of life and other outcomes for people living with chronic conditions. Research has also found benefits related to depression and confidence in managing health. The evidence is not perfect, and results vary by program, but the overall direction is encouraging.
For benefit advisors, this is an important distinction to share with leadership and clients. Health coaching is not a replacement for primary care. It is a way to extend its reach.
One of the biggest advantages of combining onsite primary care with coaching is the opportunity for more consistent touchpoints. Health benefits often get the most attention during open enrollment. Employees may also think about their health when they schedule an annual physical or receive a screening result. But chronic conditions and lifestyle choices do not follow an enrollment calendar.
Coaching creates a reason to stay engaged throughout the year. That matters because many of the factors that influence health happen outside the exam room. Employees still have to decide what to eat, whether to exercise, how to manage stress and whether to follow through on a treatment plan. A coach can provide encouragement, accountability and practical support along the way.
For organizations investing in onsite primary care, adding coaching can also strengthen the overall value of the benefit. Onsite primary care has been associated with lower overall health care spending and lower use of some high-cost services. Health coaching may help build on those results by supporting the behaviors and self-management skills that can prevent health issues from becoming more serious.
That does not mean every coaching program will produce immediate savings. Benefit advisors should be careful about promising a specific return on investment. Instead, the better message is that coaching can help employees get more value from the primary care resources already available to them. The goal is an interconnected model where the provider addresses the medical need and the coach helps the employee take the next step.
For employers, that can mean a more engaged workforce, better support for employees managing chronic conditions and a stronger return on an investment in onsite care. For benefit advisors, it is another way to show clients that a primary care strategy does not have to stop at the clinic door.
References
Barnet-Hepples, T., Dario, A., Oliveira, J., Maher, C., Tiedemann, A., & Amorim, A. (2024). Health coaching improves physical activity, disability and pain in adults with chronic non-cancer pain: A systematic review. Journal of Physiotherapy, 70(2), 115–123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jphys.2024.01.001
Basu, S., Zhang, T., Gilmore, A., Datta, E., & Kim, E. Y. (2020). Utilization and cost of an employer-sponsored comprehensive primary care delivery model. JAMA Network Open, 3(4), e203803. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.3803
Boehmer, K. R., Álvarez-Villalobos, N. A., Barakat, S., de Leon-Gutierrez, H., Ruiz-Hernandez, F. G., Elizondo-Omaña, G. G., Vaquera-Alfaro, H., Ahn, S., Spencer-Bonilla, G., Gionfriddo, M. R., Millan-Alanis, J. M., Abdelrahim, M., Prokop, L. J., Murad, M. H., & Wang, Z. (2023). The impact of health and wellness coaching on patient-important outcomes in chronic illness care: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Patient Education and Counseling, 117, 107975. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2023.107975