Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Support Staff Senate Assembly

Media Room, LRC 160

Marywood University

 Executive Council/Committee Members in Attendance:

Carol Boynosky, Chair of Support Staff

Artie Frank, Representative for Maintenance/Grounds

Cheryl Kosydar, Representative for Housekeeping

Absent:

Heather Budow, Vice Chair of the Executive Council

Patricia Purcell, Vice Chair of Support Staff

Michael Pasqualicchio, Representative for Security

I. Call to Order

The meeting was called to order by Carol Boynosky. Carol announced that Pat Dunleavy, Assistant Vice President for Human Resources, was going to speak to the support staff this morning about health care.

II. Pat Dunleavy Addressed the Support Staff

Pat Dunleavy addressed the Support Staff by saying that Marywood University is a self- funded institution. What that means to us is that our health care cost is determined by a few things including the frequency and cost of claims. Pat equated self funding to a budgeted heat bill. Your cost may be higher or lower depending on various things, and in the end, you pay the difference. Institutions that have self-funded insurance, have up and down cycles.

Pat gave a breakdown of healthcare costs and an explanation that included stop losses both individual and aggregate (all employees) and that once we hit the amount of the stop loss (i.e. 125,000/yr. for individual) we then have to go into our reserves to cover the cost. Currently, we have nothing in our reserve. Last year we had 6 or 7 people with big claims and as a result, we had to use our reserve funds. We now have to build in a cushion that is sued for health care if you need it. The people that do an analysis of our health care costs say we can expect a bad year in about 3 years; we are not expecting this year to be as bad as last year. The health care industry has something called the 80/20 rule. That is 20% of the people use 80% of the costs. And the 20% changes from year to year. So, what can we do? That's why Jill Murray is here today. Jill is going to speak to you about our Wellness Program. The Wellness Program is to get people to make changes in their lifestyle before you move into that 20% category.

III. Jill Murray Addressed the Support Staff

Jill Murray, Director of the Institute for Corporate Health and Wellness, addressed the support staff by saying that she will talk about what the Institute does - wellness, safety and education. We offer you opportunities to have the resources to educate yourselves and your families.

We began by doing a study on prescription medications because that was the easiest data to access. We see aggregate data immediately. Every time someone uses generic meds, our discount is deeper. So for someone who uses maintenance drugs, if they get the generic brand (which is exactly the same as the name brand) or they use mail order, we get a significant savings.

The 80/20 rule Pat spoke about means that 20% of our employees have chronic conditions or one time big events, the other 80% are either well, or at risk of moving into the 20% category. The institute is here to help you maintain that healthy status, to help you manage your health care better, to educate you so you continue with generic drugs. We offer things like healthy cooking classes. At Marywood University we have a brand new on-site exercise facility. Everyone wants that. We have it, right here on our campus. Pat said she heard we have a group of folks from our housekeeping staff up there every day after work. Our initiatives are working.

Pat:

Prescription drugs by industry went up 16%; ours went up by nothing; our generic usage increase; our mail order usage increased. We are way above what Blue Cross's other companies are doing. Blue Cross wants to know what we're doing to have these increased discounts. We are educating our employees and their families.

Another company who has an employee driven plan has a certain amount of money in an account, if you don't use it, you get to keep it. What happened was when the doctor said you need an MRI, employees began comparing the costs from one place to another and there were differences. We're not going to have an employee driven plan like that, but we can still ask these kinds of questions.

Workers Compensation has losses as well, the industry average is 1, we were at 1.59 in 2005 and we are expecting to be at 1.03 this July. We would like to be .8 or .7. We've got to work at getting these numbers down. Our trips, slips and falls are our safety hazards. If you see a safety hazard, let someone on the safety committee know. We have a saying, frequency breeds severity. It is important that we cut that frequency number down and develop a culture of safety. Educating people is the key to success.

IV. Support Staff Hospitality Committee Items

Linda Dziecol, Hospitality Committee, reported that the picnic at Knoebels Amusement Park this year will take place on July 22, 2007. She thanked her committee for the great job they continually do with fundraisers. She announced they will begin putting events and fundraisers on the Support Staff Senate webpage.

V. The meeting came to a close at 11:00 a.m.

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Comments to Support Staff Senate Chair: boynosky@marywood.edu
This site is maintained by:Carol Boynosky
Last update: January, 2007
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