Each week, a healthcare professional responds to a reader's query on an industry issue. This week's expert is Roger Reed, executive vice president and chief health officer at Gordian Health Solutions.

Question: What is the role of health coaching in CDHPs?

Response:(Roger Reed) When CDHPs were first offered, only about 10 percent of employees enrolled in them. Today, about 56 percent of employees will enroll, with participation sometimes as high as 90 percent. The individual is being asked to take more responsibility, to set their own goals and to make informed decisions about their healthcare.

A recent Hewitt survey found that 93 percent of employees were comfortable with taking greater responsibility for their healthcare decisions and would be comfortable modifying their health plan. However, most of them had no idea how to accomplish it. These employees are asking how to become a better healthcare consumer and how to take responsibility and improve their own healthcare to avoid dipping into their HSAs to pay these bills.

Health coaching supports employers as they move toward consumer-driven healthcare. Health coaching also supports employees as they try to become more judicious users of healthcare and more active consumers so that they can reach their own health potential.

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