Behavioral Economics
Your vice president is an accountant and believes that accountants make the best practice managers. One of the three finalists for a practice management role has an accounting background. Everyone on the search team has ranked this candidate lowest of the finalists. You fear that your vice president will tend to selectively read the team’s recommendations and lean toward hiring this person. What can you do to offset this potential confirmation bias?
Thirty-four percent of the employees in your health system are obese, and 16 percent of their children are obese as well. Obese employees are less productive, have higher medical costs, and miss more work. Employees with obese children also miss more work, so persuading employees and their families to lose weight looks like a good investment for the system. In fact, effective, clearly cost-effective interventions are available to reduce obesity, and you offer them to your employees and their families. You have recently begun to make weight-loss interventions available for free, but only 1 percent of your employees have signed up for them. What behavioral economics tools can you use to help your employees lose weight?
