Hannaford provides guide to Healthy Living through quality

SCARBOROUGH, Maine —A lot has changed since 1883, when Arthur Hannaford started the company that bears his name. Not only has the grocer grown to 171 stores, with 134 in-store pharmacies, but Hannaford also has become a trailblazer through its culture of fostering health from the inside of the company, out.

Of course Hannaford has its Guiding Stars program—a nutrition navigation program that helps make shopping simple for consumers—but its health-and-wellness initiatives really are much broader and deep-rooted.

“I think one of the signature items supporting our culture of health is that we’ve had wellness professionals working with associates at all our stores and workplaces for about 10 years now,” said Millard Nance, VP pharmacy. “When people are ready to make a change to a healthier lifestyle—for example, eating better or quitting smoking—we’re ready to engage them with professionals who can help.”

In the “2009 Health Care Cost Survey” report, professional services firm Towers Perrin touted Hannaford’s ability to drive benefit cost savings, business value and brand strength through its healthcare strategy, in particular four key elements of its strategy:

Focusing on quality to spur more competition in local healthcare markets and more collaboration between providers and the company;

Using “informatics” to measure current performance and define the future path;

Building a culture of health by putting health in employees’—and customers’—hands; and

Connecting employees, providers and customers in lower-cost, higher-quality, community-based health care.

“The center of all those elements is quality. We’re focused on making sure, at the individual level, our associates are getting quality care,” Nance told Drug Store News. “We’re the only U.S. retailer to achieve platinum-level status under the National Business Group on Health Employers for Healthy Lifestyles program.”

The results clearly speak for themselves. Hannaford’s healthcare spending during the past three years dropped 11% while costs for most U.S. companies were rising. Furthermore, in the first year of the culture-of-health initiative, 26% of associates were at risk for high cholesterol; in the following year, that number dropped to 13%. Similarly, 20% of associates were, at the outset, smokers; a year later, only 10% were smokers, the report stated.

Today, the company continues to expand its culture of health outward, offering shoppers in-store nutrition classes and store tours led by registered dieticians. “We have 21 registered dieticians working with consumers and holding nutrition classes” in stores in every market in which it operates, Nance said.

Meanwhile, the company also offers its Healthy Saver Plus program, which provides uninsured or underinsured consumers with a way of realizing savings on prescription drugs, including more than 450 feature generic drugs that are available for $4 for a 30-day supply. Additional benefits of the program include savings on vision care, hearing aids and select diabetic supplies. There currently are more than 150,000 enrollees in the Healthy Saver Plus program.