In addition, the researchers point out, these programs can dramatically lower health costs.

"The current health care system is based on medical providers waiting in silos (medical offices, hospitals) for patients to arrive with illness," lead investigator Dr. Richard V. Milani told Reuters Health in an email. "Treatment is directed towards cure (when possible) or palliation," he noted. "Little to no effort is made toward prevention."

Dr. Milani and Dr. Carl J. Lavie, both from the Ochsner Health System, New Orleans, assessed the clinical efficacy and cost-effectiveness of a 6-month work site health intervention, using mostly staff and program components from cardiac rehabilitation and exercise training (CRET). Overall, 308 employees of a single company and 31 spouses were randomly assigned to a 6-month active intervention (n = 185) or usual care (n = 154).

Active intervention consisted of work site health education, smoking cessation counseling, stress management, a lipid clinic, nutritional education, fitness counseling, selected physician referral, and other health counseling.

After the intervention, the authors documented significant improvements in quality-of-life scores (+10%), anxiety (-32%), depression (-33%), somatization (-33%), hostility (-47%), body fat (-9%), HDL cholesterol (+13%), total cholesterol/HDL cholesterol ratio (-14%), and diastolic blood pressure (-2%).

They also observed significant improvements in health habits and total health risk score.

Forty-eight individuals in the intervention group had been classified as high risk at baseline. Twenty-eight of these people (58%) were in the low-risk category after the intervention.

Average employee annual claim costs were 48% lower in the 12 months after the intervention compared to the 12 months before it started. Costs for the control group remained unchanged.

"Many of the arguments against spending more effort and money towards prevention are that it takes too long to realize a financial return on investment," Dr. Milani said. "We have shown that work site prevention is highly effective in reducing illness and is highly cost-effective."

"Reducing health care costs is now a major news topic and most proposals continue to focus on our current health care delivery model, which is flawed," he continued. "We have to spend more time and money toward early recognition and prevention. It's safer, more effective and much less costly than our current models of health care delivery."