Get an Assist to Your Goal from a Healthcare Coach

Some experts think healthcare coaching might go a long way toward managing the system's ills, too. Approximately 75 percent of the total U.S. healthcare expense-more than $2 trillion in 2006-is attributable to chronic disease. Yet research has shown that just over half of people with chronic conditions actually get recommended preventive care-aspirin therapy after a heart attack, say. By doing a good job of guiding people "you keep people out of the hospital and reduce readmission rates," argues Ken Thorpe, a healthcare policy expert who is executive director of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease. As the $1 billion earmarked for prevention in February's Recovery Act is spent, Thorpe believes, all manner of programs and businesses will sprout up to help people mind their doctor, quit smoking, get active, lose weight.

There's already a considerable spectrum of offerings, from the Health Dialog model to services of solo entrepreneurs with little or no background in health. "The coaching industry is still the Wild West," says Sean Slovensky, president and CEO of Cincinnati-based Hummingbird Coaching Services. Hummingbird is hired both by companies (including Google and Adecco Group) that extend the services to employees and by individuals who search online for a weight-loss coach, for example. Such individual coaching costs about $35 to $45 per month. "We are busier now than we were when the economy was good," Slovensky says.

Hummingbird's coaching approach is based on the tenets of positive psychology, identifying personal strengths-a high capacity for self-control, resilience, or compassion, for example-and using them to help the cause. The majority of Hummingbird coaches have a master's in counseling, though some are exercise physiologists or nurses, says Slovensky. On average, Hummingbird clients interact with their coaches four or five times per month by phone, E-mail, instant messenger, or cellphone texts but not in person.

Robin Hardman, a Hummingbird coach in Ontario, Canada, has tackled a range of goals, from helping pregnant women eat more healthfully to getting clients trim and fit enough to go off cholesterol or hypertension medications. The reward, she says, is in watching people reach those "ah-ha moments when they realize they have a choice."

Source: US News and World Report, Sarah Baldauf, 6/5/09