CHS Health Services: Putting Wellness
Coaches to Work
by Debra Reid, Certified Wellcoach
Who We Are: CHS Health Services, Inc. (CHS) is a health and wellness organization with employer-dedicated onsite health centers designed to provide meaningful, effective, and higher quality health care to employees and their dependents across the country. We build and staff health clinics on large company cam- puses based on the staffing model the client desires. We might place nurse practitioners, registered nurses, registered dietitians, physician assistants, physicians, and health coaches at their site. Our health coaches are any one of these experts and can also be fitness specialists. For the last five years, we have worked with a partner to provide health and wellness coach training for our coaching staff. When we hire new coaches, we let them know that they will be required to go through our preferred training and certification program in order to maintain their employment with us. We use the organization’s model as the foundation for training and blend that together with our CHS Health Services, Inc. methodology, protocol, and philosophy to provide the most comprehensive training program possible.
Clients Response to Health Coaching: Health coaching has received high marks from our clients in engaging employees and improving health outcomes. These ingredients make for success within CHS. We have placed health coaches at various clinics and are showing positive return on investment for clients offering health coaching services.
Coaching is Catching Other Clinicians’ Interest: Our clinic staffs have noticed the benefits of adding health coaching to the mix of services provided by our onsite clinics. One PA in particular mentioned that health coaching changes the atmosphere of the clinics to the point that she wondered why she wasn’t taught coaching as a part of her curriculum at medical school. She is now talking to her physician about it because she sees daily how coaching engages both patients and clinicians alike.
Utilizing Coaching to Reach Beyond the Episodic Visit: Through our health management and wellness coaching programs, we provide health management education, personalized health coaching, and coordinate patients’ medical care and referrals, all from one location. Even if someone comes into our clinic for an episodic visit, we provide coaching and information to ensure he or she gets the best possible care, and we address any other health concerns he or she has. Improving a patient’s health means changing behavior, and we know that health coaching is the catalyst to that change.