There is an opportunity for employers to structure plan designs to incorporate incentives with the use of eHealth.  This feature allows for an effective bridge between eHealth tools and health care benefit designs.  While many eHealth platforms and tools have been shown to be effective in promoting behavior change, they are limited by low rates of adoption and usage.  Through the incentives offered by plan designs, however, use of eHealth tools can be promoted and improved.

Incentives – monetary and other rewards – are increasingly recognized as an important vehicle for engaging employees and promoting healthy behavior changes.  eHealth tools can enable and support value-based or consumer directed health plan designs with structured incentives, i.e., incentives which are contingent on specific, targeted health behaviors.  Conversely, the health plan designs can help increase participation in various eHealth initiatives, thereby increasing their potential to reach a large population and produce significant behavior changes.  Examples include co-pay reductions for employees who take part in an online nutrition program, or lower premium contributions for those employees who complete an online tailored Health Risk Assessment.  Using eHealth technologies to promote health requires fewer resources than traditional health promotion programs offered at work sites, because both the start-up and maintenance costs are relatively low.  Even after providing financial incentives to employees who enroll, employers should expect to see significant cost savings from the overall reduction in adverse health outcomes.

eHealth can promote improved consumerism and self-care as well as reduction of risk factors and other health problems, which can help plan designs achieve the critical goal of optimizing health and health outcomes.  The synergy of plan designs that promote health and wellness with online tools and that make resources for their improvement easily accessible and widely disseminated can help employers move towards a healthier (and therefore more productive) workforce.