John Thelen wouldn’t be running three laps around St. Charles Bend each week if it weren’t for a $500 light at the end of the tunnel.

It was that up-to-half-a-grand bonus St. Charles offers employees who meet certain wellness goals that finally got the senior Web developer out of his chair.

“The whole weight loss thing is just something that, until you get that last motivator, it just doesn’t happen,” he said.

St. Charles, Bend’s largest employer, is in its first year of offering its wellness program, called Healthy Lives, and it’s among the local companies that will need to take a good look at their programs before the start of 2014 to ensure they comply with new Affordable Care Act rules.

Employer-sponsored wellness programs generally work by collecting health information on employees and offering incentives — money, usually — to stay healthy. The hope is that the programs will drive down health care costs by decreasing the amount of claims filed, cutting absenteeism and keeping employees energetic.

The new federal guidelines are designed to strengthen such programs, thereby improving Americans’ health and reducing the overall cost of health care. The rules apply to what the Department of Labor calls “health-contingent wellness programs,” those that, like St. Charles’ program, require employees to meet certain fitness goals in order to earn incentives.

Starting Jan. 1, companies that offer wellness programs will have to make them available to all of their employees, the programs must be clearly communicated and enrollment must be offered annually.

Programs must also offer alternatives for those who need special accommodations due to disabilities or other situations. For example, if the company launches a walking challenge, the employee who broke his or her ankle must be provided an alternative challenge, such as swimming, said Dawn Robbins, who manages the Oregon Public Health Institute’s Wellness@Work program, designed to improve workplace health. In practice, that will involve conversations between the employee and the company to determine an appropriate alternative, she said.

Healthy Lives pairs employees with health coaches who work to help them meet their goals, said Alisha Fehrenbacher, the hospital’s director of strategic improvement. Employees with health conditions can also be waived from meeting certain health goals.

“It’s not a rigid structure in that format, it’s making sure we engage everyone to their fullest potential,” she said.

The Oregon Educators Benefit Board, which just launched its wellness program this month, represents about 148,000 school district employees and dependents throughout the state, including Bend-La Pine Schools.

Denise Hall, OEBB’s deputy administrator, said employees are provided enough options to meet their goals that everyone should be able to choose a route that works for them. Through the plan, called Healthy Futures, employees complete a wellness assessment and then choose two health-related goals — lose weight or quit smoking, for example — and can cut $100 from their deductible in 2014 if they meet them. OEBB has not made decisions on how the program will work in future years, Hall said.

A final federal health care reform rule increases the maximum amount of money employees can shave off their health insurance bills if they meet the goals from 20 percent to 30 percent. The cap can increase to 50 percent if the program involves eliminating or reducing tobacco use.

Employers can, of course, still offer benefits that fall below those caps, as is the case with St. Charles and OEBB.

All in all, though, those who oversee local employer-sponsored wellness programs said the new federal rules probably won’t have a noticeable impact on their programs.

What could happen, though, is the Affordable Care Act’s preventative approach to health care could encourage companies to build cultures of health, Robbins said. A truly comprehensive wellness program would include both goals and incentives for employees in addition to an office environment that makes it easier to be healthy, she said. That could mean cutting the donuts from morning meetings or providing more flex time so employees can exercise, Robbins said.

Whatever the rules’ impact, excitement is building in Oregon around workplace wellness, Robbins said.

“I’ve been in this work for 15 years and I’ve never seen such great interest as there is now,” she said. “People are interested. They’re a little overwhelmed right now, but they are interested.”

Wellness programs have become a popular offering among local employers in recent years. Some, such as Deschutes County and the Bend-based American Licorice Company, have gone so far as to complement their wellness programs with on-site wellness amenities. The county offers an on-site medical clinic for its employees that treats illnesses and injuries, performs exams and provides immunizations. American Licorice’s wellness center is a spot where employees can learn more about its wellness program.

It’s not just here, either. A 2012 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 94 percent of large U.S. companies (at least 200 employees) and 63 percent of smaller companies offered employees a wellness benefit in addition to health insurance.

Deschutes Brewery in Bend offers a participation-only wellness program to its 246 employees, so there are no goals or incentives, said Human Resources Director Pat Gerhart. Such participation-only plans aren’t subject to the new rules.

“Our goal is to have healthy, involved people with our wellness program, but there’s no mandates or ‘Do this and then you get this’ kind of a program,” she said. “It’s more inclusive of everybody.”

St. Charles has seen a 20 percent drop in employee claims costs in the first seven months of 2013 compared with the same time last year, a change the company attributes to Healthy Lives, Fehrenbacher said. Roughly 2,000 of St. Charles’ 3,400 employees have signed up for Healthy Lives, she said.

In January, Healthy Lives will open up to employees who aren’t covered under St. Charles’ health insurance, and will also become available to employees’ spouses.

For Thelen at St. Charles, the extra push has helped the 50-year-old drop 58 pounds since the launch of Healthy Lives. He’s also seeing a doctor regularly, has cancer screenings scheduled and his blood sugar and cholesterol are back to healthy levels.

“I think the main catalyst was just knowing that I needed to do something,” he said.

Learn more

Wellness@Work, a program of the Oregon Public Health Institute, offers a free online assessment of your office’s health in areas like culture, healthy eating, movement and tobacco. For more information, visit: www.wellnessatworkoregon.org/waws/progress.php