Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, February 22, 2011,
Item A2
>> a 2, consider and take appropriate action on the following, a, receive recognition of Travis County as one of the central Texas healthiest employers presented by the seton family of hospitals and business adjourn will, and b, encourage Travis County employees to attend the awards event on March 1, 2011.
>> judge, Commissioners, it's always a pleasure to appear before the court.
today is an exceptional pleasure because we're here to announce Travis County being recognized as one of the healthiest central Texas employers.
I have with me today dr. Deer, garnet and josie pena.
they are responsible for this so I'm going to let them talk.
>> I feel healthier just looking at them.
>> first of all, we would like to thank the Commissioners and the judge for all the support for the health and wellness clinic and this award wouldn't have been possible without your support.
and we have very many programs that are in place and we're working on certain things like the tobacco-free workplace and other projects with baylor university, so we're really grateful to you all for supporting us, and maybe can talk about some of the programs.
>> we have several programs that we have in place that we've been working with, working on and looking forward to continuing to work.
we have the yoga at work, which is very successful.
we have the lion heart health camp that was out at airport that's been very successful.
and we have the cardio and strengthening training session with lee, which has been very successful.
so those are types of programs that we're looking forward to keeping and hopefully gaining more employees to engage in these programs. And I'm just very overwhelmed and excited about this award and hope everybody else is as well.
when I got the news, I kind of just jumped and screamed in the lady's ear, hi to ask her three or four times are you for real?
and she was like yes, I'm calling to let you know.
I'm excited about it and looking forward to getting our workforce into being -- continue to being healthy.
we have -- the Travis County first annual hopefully walk, run event may 15th for all county employees and retirees and their family members that we're working on putting in place.
>> the court members have been out of town during the last run-walks.
maybe we'll be in town this year.
>> I hope so.
and we're just -- and today we're just actually asking the court just to inform you of the award and encouraging all employees if they can to attend on their lunch break.
the award will be presented at 12:45 at the palmer events center, 900 barton springs road on March 1 th.
March 1st.
>> this is not a cash award.
>> the award was return on good health.
>> we won't know our ranking until the event, this is March 1st.
because they were -- the categories was large entities, small and medium, so we were in the large entities.
>> I imagine that our -- consideration had something to do with the fact our health outcomes are -- are -- we beat the average on our health outcomes for our employees?
>> we do have an employee health clinic.
>> there is --
>> with the original -- I mean compared to most employers.
>> there's an application submitted and josie might be able to speak on that.
she worked on the application.
>> we submitted the application and let them know we did disease management programs and you are right, Travis County is unique in that it does have a clinic for its employees.
and with that, we sent them information that we manage disease, could be hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, and we gave them the outcomes as far as what successes we had.
we did reference in castled calr year 2009 we had 75 people we placed on medication to help stop smoking and 25 have quit for over six months.
>> go ahead.
I'm sorry.
>> and that we continue with that with doing smoking cessation programs. And I don't think we referenced the baylor study in the application.
we didn't do that.
that's kind of separate, but we did send out all that information to let them know that -- how successful we can -- we're trying to help the employees.
>> not only is it a huge benefit to the employees themselves, it also has a huge benefit to the bottom line to the county as a provider of health insurance.
>> absolutely.
>> but also all of the -- all of the information coming down from the federal level with regard to our deficit and whatnot, it seems to be virtually the most patriotic thing you can do besides armed services is stay healthy and keep health care costs down because it's really breaking our back on many levels.
>> we need to give ourselves a shout out and sometimes you need to just shout out because we have done a great job starting from scratch the way it was, and I was here when I came to the Commissioners court, how it was then, and thank goodness we've gotten away from
>> [indiscernible].
this has been a very aggressive court has far as doing some things to insure that our employees are in a healthy state, but also doing preventive things to assist us.
I was even thinking about some of the -- if you are diabetic, you've got the necessary supplies like strips and all these other kind of things.
all those kind of things, you know, that we're charging.
we take on -- of course the colonoscopy situations, those benefits.
it's been a lot of aggressive benefits that Travis County has been able to offer.
and we look at our premiums taken way we have ended up doing, like I said, you need a shoutout and thank goodness, I'm going to shout out.
anybody going to ask me, I'm going to shout out.
y'all are doing a great job and we are as a whole.
>> there's a program called upstream thinking and I think that's what the court has demonstrated a lot with the employees here.
you are trying to address things on the front end and not wait until somebody is down in a rapid stream trying to throw funds and get them out and save them.
this is really progressive on the court's part to support the clinic and everything that we do so we appreciate that.
a shoutout goes out to you as well.
>> that's what I was referencing, being proactive.
>> the event is March 1 at what time?
>> 9:00 to 2:00.
>> we don't want county employees out there.
>> during the lunch hour is what we want them to go out.
>> 12:45 is when the awards will be presented.
>> 12:45?
use your lunch hour wisely.
>> yes.
>> free of charge, right?
>> that's correct.
>> no free lunch, but if you bring a healthy brown bag, you are welcome to eat it there.
>> yes.
>> it's a healthy walk.
>> there's a walk with it as well.
>> 1.5 miles.
>> get a chance to eat your lunch, walk and help recognize Travis County.
>> absolutely.
yes.
>> thank you all very much.
>> thank you.
>> appreciate it.
>> thank you for your service.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Tuesday, February, 2011 2:19 PM
