Health Coaches helping people improve their health

Coaching has been around for many years, but is now starting to hit the ‘mainstream’. There are many types of coaches, from executive coaches for organizations who wish to increase their profits, to business coaches who help entrepreneurs start or grow their business, to wellness coaches who help people achieve their health goals.

An area that coaching is also growing is in the out-patient healthcare field. Many insurance companies are offering coaching services to their high-risk members in the hopes that it will cut costs by keeping them from returning to the hospital, and according to the studies that have taken place, it is proving successful.

A study by doctors at the University of Colorado found that patients who worked with health coaches were less likely to return to the emergency room in the first six months after they left the hospital. They estimated that the use of coaches could reduce annual hospital costs by about $845 for every patient enrolled in the program.

SCAN Health Plan began its coaching program in 2005 and has enrolled about 1,600 members. It’s based on a model developed by Dr. Eric Coleman, who published the University of Colorado study involving 750 patients in last month’s Archives of Internal Medicine.

Coleman found elderly patients who received health coaching had lower hospital readmission rates. After a month, 8 percent of patients who were coached were back in the ER, compared to 12 percent who didn’t receive coaching. The benefits extended up to six months after the program.

The National Center for Health Statistics reports that visits to the emergency room jumped 18 percent in the past decade to 110 million in 2004. About 13 percent of those visits led to people being hospitalized.

Most health coaches are registered nurses hired by insurers to make regular house visits or talk to patients on the telephone. Often these coaches role-play with patients to teach them how to read their prescriptions or make appointments with doctors.

To address those issues, the federal government is experimenting with a three-year pilot coaching program that involves about 115,000 fee-for-service Medicare patients who tend to suffer from heart failure or diabetes.

Since last year, participating patients received coaching after leaving the hospital or as part of their regular care through eight health care organizations. The groups must show a 5 percent cost savings as a result of the coaching or repay the government for the cost of the service.

Results of the study won’t be available until next summer, but anecdotal evidence suggests some Medicare recipients improved their health through coaching, said Barbara Hoffman of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the agency that administers government health insurance programs for the elderly and disabled.

As a coach, I think this is great news! What coaching does is help the client take responsibility for their own actions. When you work with a coach, you make your goals, you determine what you want to do to achieve those goals, and the coach is your source of support and motivation to help you make it happen. Just imagine a healthier America because of coaching!

However, not all coaches are equal, and it is important for people to understand the background and training of someone who calls themselves a ‘coach’. I have heard of people who call themselves a ‘diet coach’ or ‘food coach’, because they lost weight, themselves. I have even heard of a coach who recommended medications to a client, although that coach is not a qualified healthcare professional.

If you look for a coach, make sure that the person has the education and background that qualifies them for the service they are providing. Ask them about their coach training, also. There are many programs to educate people who want to offer coaching services. The programs that insurance companies are offering are not ‘strict’ coaching, but more a combination of health advising and coaching and I would imagine that all of their coaches have received specific wellness coach training. But outside of the healthcare setting, a coach should not advise a client on medications or eating programs for a health condition. These are the roles of qualified health professionals, not coaches. A coach’s role is to ask you questions and help you determine your course of action, not to make recommendations and give you meal plans or exercise plans or medication/supplement plans.