Alarmed at the soaring cost of health insurance premiums, one business has opted to invest in the wellness of its employees.“The cost of healthcare is spiralling out of control in Bermuda,” warned Air Care general manager Robert Platt.Health insurance is the company’s third-highest cost behind salaries and rent, Mr Platt said, and Air Care was seeing a steady climb in its premium ratio.“Insurance claims are fairly stable, but the cost is going up,” Mr Platt said.No one wants to pay twice as much for their health insurance, he pointed out, “but it’s gone up 52 percent in five years, so in ten years is it going to double? Unless we do something different, it will.”In 2011, Air Care paid out $263,562 on health insurance premiums, while claims weighed in at $355,744.Mr Platt contacted health insurer BF&M to discuss “ways of being more proactive than reactive”.BF&M’s Maggie Fahy and Raquel Fagundo started the wellness initiative by discussing health risk assessment with Air Care staff.“Markers like your Body Mass Index or your blood sugar are indicators of health, but we didn’t have a clue about them,” Mr Platt said.“Everybody knows refrigerant pressure or tyre pressure, but not those numbers.”The company got rid of sweet foods and drinks from the workplace, bringing in fresh fruit and water dispensers.However, noticing that few staff took an annual physical check-up, Mr Platt and his insurer came up with a tactic.Air Care offered to cover the co-payment for staff to get an annual check-up with physician Joanna Sherratt-Wyer.“If people get their physical and filled out their self-risk assessments, we increase our subsidy of their healthcare premium from 50 percent to 60 percent,” Mr Platt said.Ninety percent of staff went ahead with the annual check-up. Two were identified as pre-diabetic, and were thus able to head off a potentially devastating condition.Risk assessments also allowed Air Care’s staff to see where their own health needed improvement.“Our cholesterol, as a group, was high,” Mr Platt said. “And very few of our guys were wearing sunscreen, even though they’re out on rooftops. So we started handing out sunscreen.”By cultivating an easy-going health consciousness in the workplace, Air Care got employees talking about their own health and consequently taking better care of themselves.Mr Platt’s motives sprang from a concern over rising costs, and in that respect, he conceded, the pay-off for Air Care is “intangible”.Even though the higher rate of annual check-ups and extra ten percent subsidy means the company pays more, “there is a method to our madness”, he said.“Aside from healthy employees being an obvious good thing right now, there’s a payback down the road where people are less likely to develop problems with their health.”He said Government should take better charge of healthcare in the face of rising costs.“There’s no regulation here on what doctors and dentists can charge,” he said. “They should post their fees in their waiting rooms.”Another possibility for the company could be “buying back unused sick days” from staff at the end of each year.Speaking for BF&M, Ms Fagundo said the insurer was “a company that cares about its clients”.“Health is something everyone should care about,” she added. “Diabetes and obesity in Bermuda are a crisis. If better health also affects the bottom line, that’s an added benefit.”