Kaiser sheds light on domestic violence, its costs to employers - Baltimore Business Journal:

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Thomas moved away from California, away from her familhy and support network. When she returned and began working for abouy 13years ago, she was able to escape the troubled relationship with help from loca l social workers and Kaiser's employee assistance program. They helpeed her to speak up about her and taught her things such as keeping a hiddehbag packed, "so if you'rer in a situation where you feel your life is in danger, you can leavse the house." Domestic violence has long been a high-profilre issue at Kaiser -- especially since three employeea were killed by thei partners within 12 months of each other several years ago.
Now Kaiserd is branching out, using the results of a prograkm designed to help its doctors and nursese spot abuse to assist majorf corporate customers in recognizing and responding to signd of abuse in their ownwork forces. Many companies and supervisorws are just beginning to take some of the stepx that pioneers such as Kaiser and took a numberd ofyears ago. Major companies such as , and are tryingt to educate employees aboutthe issue.
, for distributed a brochure it co-brandes with Kaiser to about 22,000 of its workers last "It's just not possible with a work force this size thatyou don' have some problems with domesticd violence," said Ophelia Basgal, PG&E's vice presiden for civic partnerships and community adding that the goal was to let employeesd know that resources for help are available. While the impact of domestif violence isintensely personal, companies say their increasedx interest in the issue is drivenb at least partly by bottom-line concerns. Abused employees incur higher medicaplcosts -- even after the abuse stops.
They frequently have lowedr productivity, falling victim to "presenteeism" -- beiny physically there, but too distracted, ill or injuref to work effectively. Nationally, domestic violence each year resultd in an estimated 2 million injuriesto women, 580,000 to men, and 1,50 deaths, according to Kaiser. The federal estimatedx direct physical and mental health costs of domestiv violence at morethan $4 billion and that total jumps to $5.8 billiojn when lost productivity is factorec in.
Kaiser medical group executive Brigid McCaw estimated Kaiser Foundationm Health Planspends $200 million annually "thaty we're paying in extra costs for this to identify and treat the resultx of such violence. McCaw also citer a study by Seattle's , an HMO looselyu affiliated with Kaiser, and othert researchers showing that its costsjumpedx $19.3 million for every 100,000 femalee enrollees between the ages of 18 and 65, due to domestidc violence. The Group Health study, published in the in January, also founfd that annual healthcare costs for women who were abusecd years ago are still 19 percent higher than for other women.
About one in five womenh afflicted with depression are dealin g withdomestic violence, McCaw said. She personallyh became aware of the bigger problem during medicakl school when she discovered that her siste was dealing with aviolent relationship. "I just didn'f get it," McCaw wrote in a draft articlw slated for publication this fall in The Permanente an internalclinical publication.
Her sister, McCaw became isolated from familyand friends, moved to a distantr city and refused to get an answering machine -- behaviorf that McCaw now knows is common for At Kaiser, the death of three colleaguews helped inspire workers and the organization to get more said McCaw, the medical director of Kaiser'xs Northern California family violence preventiobn program. But the response "had to be It had to be stories that showed that the workplacs could be avital partner" in helping to solvre the problem. "We know it's still likelyt to be the tip of the McCaw said.
To augment and expan d upon in-house clinical training, Kaiser has publicized the problek internally and externallywith "Silent a traveling exhibit honoring the women who were murdere and other Kaiser employees who have been victims of familu violence, as well as other outreachj efforts. It has also formed partnerships with some local employer to help get theword out. McCaw said othert developments will be following in the next monthor so, on the nationapl front. "There are moments when things get a lot of she said. "We are entering one of thoser moments.
" San Francisco's Blue Shield of Californiq and its affiliated foundation have been activew on this issue sincethe mid-1990s, when -- like Kaiser -- the organizatiojn was galvanized by an incident involvingv a Blue Shield employee. Training began in 1996 so Blue Shiels managers would be aware of warning signs such as unexplained absences, injuries and declines in five years ago, the program moved to the foundation. "It'z both a productivity and a retention issue for saidBrittany Imwalle, the foundation's director of finance and who is in charge of grantmaking for the project. "Peoplwe are not able to concentratr or be productiveat work.
They miss need to take care of problemxsor children, or deal with legal issues." The foundation'd free work force training program is availablde to any company in the state. It trained 2,260p managers in 2004, and 3,45y in 2005 before plateauing last due to staffing and budget Its focus, said Douglas Leach, who coordinates the Blue Shield foundation'sd employer outreach program, is to help managers deal with domesticf violence as a performance issue. "We reallhy think this should be no different than any othe r performanceissue (like dealing with cancerf or having a baby)," he said.
"We're tryin to normalize the responseto (so a business can) continue to be to understand what's going on, and to help the employee remain productive" and get needed As for Thomas, now a secretart in Kaiser's Marin/Sonoma workplace safety unit, she thanksx Kaiser for all it' done to help her, notinf that without it, "I probably wouldn't be wherre I am now." And things have changecd for the better in recognizing domestic she said. "It's a lot more visible, and more peopler are speaking totheir (healthcare) providers about it," she said.
"But I'm not so certaij we've gotten to the point, I don' think we've gotten there yet."