I was visiting a friend at the Cleveland Clinic last week and was amazed at what a good job they do to encourage their employees to live a healthy lifestyle. In 2007 they decided to ban smoking in all their buildings (as it should be). Then they really got aggressive and stopped hiring people who smoked. Well, to me that’s a “no brainer.” The Cleveland Clinic is self-insured and saw a dramatic drop in their costs as a result of this.
The clinic instituted Lifestyle 180,a healthy lifestyle program for their employees, conceived and overseen by Dr. Michael Roizen, Chief Medical Officer. He has appeared many times on “Oprah,” and is a leading authority on wellness and preventative care, and authored numerous books on wellness and preventative care.
The Cleveland Clinic also has a great wellness center that is equipped as well as any “Y” or membership club. It includes weight machines, free weights, treadmills, stairmasters etc. You get the idea. In addition there is an indoor and outdoor track and a four lane heated indoor swimming pool. Oh yeah, there is also a full gym where there was a basketball game in full swing in the middle of the day. Along the edges of the gym were all kinds of exercise bikes, medicine balls and other equipment. There are also Yoga, Pilates, kickboxing, step aeorbic classes and massage therapists. Not only is this available to employees but also to patients and their relatives. I found this to be really amazing.
As I rode the bus and walked around the massive clinic campus, I visited many of their cafeterias, cafes and Starbucks. The food was some of the most “healthy” I have ever seen at any medical institution. I always make a point of checking out the food offerings. Sure, there was still some bacon and eggs for breakfast, but my impression was there were far more fruits, vegetables and whole grain offerings than fatty foods. Equally important is they removed all unhealthy products from their vending machines.
Finally, they have a wellness store in the main building which is their cardio-vascular center. It is called 360-5. I found myself going back to it over and over. It was full of wellness and healthy lifestyle “stuff” I had never seen anywhere else. The atmosphere was stimulating. Needless to say, I had to purchase some items that I will write about in next week’s blog. I wanted to purchase more. Maybe AthleticFoodie will sell some of these items once we have tried them.
The bottom line ….here is one employer of thousands, who is trying to help their employees “do better.” Is it working? Well, their healthcare costs, which can be an employer’s greatest liability, have been dramatically lowered over the past few years. As a casual observer, they still need to work on the “obesity” problem. It was sad to see so many employees, guests and patients so over-weight. It seems the more we talk about it, the fatter we become as a nation.
Diane 
