A long time ago, when I was learning the finance trade at Cigna, the insurance folks there started talking about “24-hour coverage.”  That seemed a natural for this brand-new company which was trying very hard to mesh the life insurance culture of Connecticut General with the property/casualty culture of the Insurance Company of North America in Philadelphia. 

24-hour coverage made a lot of sense to me then.  Why couldn’t you line up your workers’ comp policies and your group health policies and simply tell your employees “you’re covered!”  And to this untutored observer, it looked like a great business opportunity for large providers like Cigna, who were able to bring both sides to the customer.  One very large state—California—welcomed the idea and offered to be an incubator.

As we all know, 24-hour coverage is still a work in progress.  (That’s usually code for “we missed the deadline,” or “we’ll keep studying it until the funding runs out.”)   There are systemic hurdles including regulation, systems integration and—yes—culture.

But the concept still makes a ton of sense, and there is one group of active and rapidly growing advocates who have developed a workable concept which makes integrated delivery of occupational and non-occupational health and productivity services a reality.

That group is the Disability Management Employer Coalition (DMEC).  Supported by a large number of major employers and providers, DMEC and its members work tirelessly to overcome hurdles and make integrated delivery of employee health and productivity programs work. 

I just attended DMEC’s national conference in Portland, and 500 participants filled three and half days with workshops, presentations and case studies—all targeting integrated disability and absence management.  These folks work hard and share what they know…in a year when most conferences are at 50% of average attendance, this conference nearly matched 2008’s record turnout.

Employers and providers who need to know more about integrated disability management, and the hard financial benefits this concept can bring to the bottom line, should go to DMEC’s website, www.dmec.org.