Context: Employers have pursued many strategies over the years to control health care costs and improve care. Disappointed by efforts to manage costs through the use of insurance-related techniques (e.g., prior authorization, restricted provider networks), employers have also begun to try to manage health by addressing their employees' key lifestyle risks. Reducing obesity (along with tobacco use and inactivity) is a priority for employers seeking to lower the incidence and severity of chronic illness and the associated demand for health services.Methods: This article describes the employer's perspective on the cost impact of obesity, discusses current practices in employer-sponsored wellness and weight management programs, provides examples from U.S. companies illustrating key points of employers' leverage and opportunities, and suggests policy directions to support the expansion of employers' initiatives, especially for smaller employers.
Findings:Researchers and policymakers often overlook the extensive efforts and considerable impact of employer-sponsored wellness and health improvement programs. Greater focus on opportunities in the workplace is merited, however, for the evidence base supporting the economic and health impacts of employersponsored health promotion and wellness is growing, although not as quickly as the experience base of large employers.
Conclusions:Public and private employers can serve their own economic interests by addressing obesity. Health care organizations, particularly hospitals,
Indoor maps are required for multiple applications, such as, navigation, building maintenance and robotics. One of common methods for map generation is laser scanning. In such maps, not only geometry of the map is of interest, but also its quality. This study aims at developing methods for real-time generation of indoor maps using features extracted from pointclouds obtained by a robot with their simultaneous quality assessment. We investigate, how this quality can be quantified for feature-based maps. First, we introduce a method for modeling 2D maps into 3D models that enable their usage for localization. Second, we review and evaluate a number of algorithms that can enable us to address features in a map. Hence, we enable the generation of objects from a pointcloud that has been sensed. Finally, we study several aspects of the map quality and we formalize them into metrics that can be applied to quantify their quality.
Recently, federal governments, state governments, and private sector groups have begun initiatives that would report the performance of health plans in key areas. United HealthCare Corporation's experience in developing and publicly releasing "report cards" for 15 of its health plans may prove useful as other efforts go forward. There are both advantages and challenges to producing a report card in terms of resource investment, directing health plans toward performance improvement, and the ability for both purchasers and policy makers to understand and make use of results. These and other issues will be important to consider as other segments of the health care industry, particularly providers, focus on reporting performance measures.
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