Meet a New Breed of Medical Professional: The Health Coach

           Like having a personal trainer for personalized finesses development, a health coach will help people make easy-to-say, hard-to-do behavioral changes that promote good health-getting enough exercise, eating a balance diet, and managing stress according to a recent NPR article (Feidt, 2012).This new health care field is relatively small but is slowly growing. On top of managing their patient’s wellness and health, the coaches are helping to drive down health care costs. Chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are the most common types of aliments afflicting Americans today

These chronic diseases are preventable; therefore, the marketability of having a good health coach is becoming more desirable. Employers are realizing the high medical cost associated from caring for these individuals. Providence, the company mention in this article reported over the three years of health coaching, they have seen a small but steady decrease in the number of obese employees- from 36 percent in 2009 to 32 percent in 2011 (Feidt, 2012). The article also reported that Medicare has started paying for up to 20 percent on obesity counseling sessions a year, translating into positive growth for this profession. With health care cost unabated and continuing to rise annually, simple initiatives like this can help shift the burden back to the individual and create a more sustainable health care system.

Reference

Feidt, A. (2012, July 23). Meet a New Breed of Medical Professional: The Health Coach. Retrieved July 24, 2012, from KaiserHealthNews: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2012/July/23/health-coach-alaska.aspx