Document Type

Report

Publication Date

4-2010

Keywords

Alcohol; Substance Abuse

Abstract

To realize the full value of their investment in Employee Assistance Program (EAP), employers should attend to the opportunities to drive down health and productivity costs by encouraging their EAPs to engage and treat workers who drink in unhealthy ways. Nationwide, EAPs engage only about one worker in twenty who has a serious alcohol problem. The lost productivity, absenteeism, excess emergency department and hospital use by the other 19 out of 20 workers with alcohol problems who are not treated add $61 billion (or approximately $200 for every man, woman and child in the United States) to the nation's health care bill. American business absorbs much of this cost in the higher premiums it pays for employer-based health insurance as a result of unidentified and untreated alcohol and drug problems.

Open Access

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Included in

Health Policy Commons

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