Town of Chapel Hill Named among Healthiest Companies in Triangle

The Town of Chapel Hill has been named one of the 35 healthiest employers across the Triangle by the Triangle Business Journal.

Jason deBruyn, with TBJ, says he is very excited about a new program that has been launched by the Town of Chapel Hill.

“They do some pretty progressive stuff,” he says. “They have a free employee health clinic. That’s staffed with a nurse practitioner, a registered nurse, and a health coach that are all employed by UNC Health Care.”

deBruyn says that the clinic is open to all town employees – eliminating many of the excuses we use for not going to the doctor.

“By having this clinic on site, and by the Town of Chapel Hill saying that the employees can come during work and get checked out, people are a lot more likely to use it,” he says.

deBruyn says he expects the use of on-site clinics to increase in the area, especially in locations where multiple companies share an office park and can split the healthcare costs.

After a long tenure with their headquarters in Chapel Hill, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has transitioned to a more central campus in Durham.

deBruyn says Blue Cross Blue Shield has been on the leading edge of providing a healthy workplace in recent years.

“They offer various incentives to encourage employees to lose as much weight as possible,” he says. “They’ll even group them into teams.”

deBruyn adds that BCBS was one of the first companies in the Triangle to begin offering this program. He says that breaking the participants up into teams can also build strong bonds among the employees.

Overall, the region has actually regressed below the national average in terms of the health workplaces, but deBruyn says a portion of that can be caused by the fact that companies have been working to stay ahead of the curve for so long.

He adds that having healthy employees can be very beneficial to the companies as well.

“There have been some really good studies,” he says, “that show that for every dollar invested in a wellness program – or in some kind of a health benefit outside of traditional health insurance – it returns as many as three, four, sometimes as much as five dollars in work productivity and in less lost time.”

Both the Town of Chapel Hill and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina have both been on the annual list in recent years. For 2014, BCBS checks in at number 7 in the region and the Town of Chapel Hill ranks 14th.

Town of Chapel Hill Named among Healthiest Companies in Triangle

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