Are Health Risk Appraisals Reliable?

Many of our clients and companies throughout the U.S. utilize and Health Risk Appraisal questionnaires to gather information on their employee population to gauge their employee health and wellness. The problem with these questionnaire is that they are subjective. If you ask an employee how many servings of fruits and vegetables they consume daily, they typically over-estimate this information. The value of these HRA is limited because of the subjectivity since they are self-reported rather than completed with the coaching of health educator or nurse.

Another problem centers around the lack of usage. Many companies offer an online and/or paper questionnaires, but voluntary participation is not significant enough for an accurate cross section of the population. The Health Risk Appraisal is designed to give each employee a picture of their current health status by a ranking scale. On a individual basis, this provides some qualtiy feedback on their health and makes some good recommendations for the individual. Again, this information is biased, but can provide some valuable health information that can promote behavior change.

The larger the cross section of employees that complete the HRA along with evaluating other information such as claim history and utilization reports helps to conceptualize the wellness status of an employee population taking into account some potential bias.


Alan Kohll
Vaccination Services of America
Health Faris of America
888-434-4358 x 102
http://www.vsamerica.com/
http://www.healthfairsamerica.com/
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