The city has created a Culture of Health team to explore programs that would prod city workers to live healthier lives by quitting smoking, exercising more and eating better, The Post has learned.
Among the approaches under consideration by the cross-agency work group assembled by Mayor de Blasio are incentives used by other cities to increase participation in voluntary health initiatives.
While city officials wouldn’t say which programs they might implement, Office of Labor Relations chief Bob Linn raved in the fall about a program he came across at the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System.
The hospital group had employees compete in teams of 10 for a trip to Paris based on how far they could walk in three months as measured by pedometers.
“It completely changed the whole nature of the way the operation was being delivered, in ways no one would ever have thought about,” Linn said in October.
Other locales across the country have offered their public workers rebates or cash payments of roughly $100 for getting physicals, joining weight-loss programs or quitting smoking.
The initiative is part of the city’s efforts to rein in skyrocketing health-care costs — which includes squeezing $3.4 billion in savings out of municipal labor unions through fiscal 2018.
Officials say they’re on target for meeting the current fiscal year’s goal of $400 million in health-care savings.
“Our objective throughout this whole process is to improve the patient-care experience, improve the health of city employees, and reduce costs,” said City Hall spokeswoman Amy Spitalnick.
Officials said the city’s first stab at a wellness initiative was offering free flu shots to city workers, a program that saw 10,000 vaccines administered in November and December.
Not everyone sees these type of programs as a boon, however.
When the Bloomberg administration proposed a similar initiative in the spring of 2013, Harry Nespoli, head of the Municipal Labor Committee, characterized wellness programs as a nanny-like intrusion: “I don’t think it’s the responsibility of anybody to tell people how to live their lives,” he said at the time.
He did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Some health-care experts cautioned that the city should forgo the one-size-fits-all approach that dispenses incentives equally to the unhealthy and the fit.
“Wellness programs should be targeted to those at risk for illness . . . since the healthiest 50 percent of the population generates only 3 percent of [health-care costs],” said Dr. A. Mark Fendrick, professor of health management and policy at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health.