Health & Wellness Services

Health & Wellness Services has ceased its operations as of November 1, 2008. We want to thank all of our staff, our customers and our individual Participants who had achieved so much in the areas of health improvement and education!

For more information, contact Steve Ryan at s.ryan@mainenetwork.org.

Questions about our closure?

Q: What is happening to the program?
A: Health & Wellness Services (the employee wellness program) and Advocates for Health (the care management program) are both ending their services to local employers and their employees. As of October 31, 2008, HWS will no longer be active as a department of Maine Network for Health, and will cease operations.

Q: Why is Health & Wellness Services ending its services?
A: HWS is discontinuing its services because it could not attract enough local employers for its wellness programs to allow it to break even.

Despite outstanding clinical results, HWS could not achieve the "economies of scale" necessary to operate a cost-effective service. To be competitive in any service offering, a company needs to spread its overhead across a sufficient number of customers, or else it become too expensive to succeed. In the current local economic conditions, HWS was not able to get up to that number of customers.

Q: What will happen to the clients being coached by Health & Wellness Services?
A: The individuals we are coaching will continue to receive caring, professional and motivational coaching services through the end of the contract terms we are obligated to meet. HWS will work closely with the employers we have been serving to transition the individual clients to another program vendor as smoothly as possible.

Q: Where is {any one of the HWS staff} now? How can I reach her?
A: Unfortunately, MNH had to let all of the HWS staff go at the end of the program. They have pursued new jobs, and can not be reached through us.

We wish them the very best and thank them for their tremendous contributions to our program, which achieved extremely high client satisfaction and outstanding clinical results.

Q: Did Health & Wellness Services fail to deliver results for its customers?
A: HWS returned fabulous results for our employers and for our individual coaching clients. The decreases in smoking, weight, blood pressure and inactivity during our coaching tenure were striking and gratifying. The employers and their committed employees deserve tremendous credit for the efforts they have made to improve their overall wellness. We feel that HWS did a great job in supporting those efforts and documenting their outstanding results.

Q: How was Health & Wellness Services related to Maine Network for Health?
A: HWS (our employee wellness program) and its sister program Advocates for Health (our care management program) were departments of MNH. MNH began HWS and Advocates in 2004 in response to our identification of a need for local care advocates to help people navigate and maximize their benefit from the local health care system.

Q: Will Maine Network for Health close now?
A: MNH, the "parent company" of Health & Wellness Services, is still strong in the business of contracting and credentialing support for providers and health plans. MNH provides important services which help both providers and health plans, and it is financially stable in this segment of our business. MNH has no plans to close its overall operations.