MediFit takes burden our of fitness center management

With recent reports about the plumping up of America, helping employees to get or stay fit is an important goal for employers if only to keep health care costs down. But not every company wants to run a corporate fitness program or center.

MediFit Corporate Services Inc., a consulting and management firm, contracts with companies to provide corporate wellness programs for employees on site. Medifit, which operates more than 100 fitness centers, manages Bank One's Springfield fitness center as a corporate contractor. Medifit operates other corporate fitness centers in Kansas City as well as in other states, but according to Sherri Giesler, local program manager for Medifit, Bank One's location is the only one operated by Medifit in southwest Missouri.

"What Bank One is good at is taking care of people and their credit cards," said Tom Kelly, Bank One spokesperson. "We're not experts at running fitness centers. We focus on what we do best. We don't run our fitness centers for the same reason we don't run our cafeterias."

MediFit specializes in "design and delivery of work site health promotion, fitness management and rehabilitation services," according to MediFit's Web site at www.medifit.com. The company has corporate offices in New Jersey and Connecticut, with regional offices in Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Missouri. Since 1994, MediFit has experienced a 240 percent growth in total client locations.

MediFit can do everything from designing and building to managing a fitness center. Services include employee interest and needs assessment, participation projection, financial estimates and facility design, the Web site said.

Giesler said MediFit began managing Bank One's center in January 2001.

"We do all the fitness center management and the majority of the health promotion services to the whole employee population at the Bank One site in Springfield," Giesler said. "We have nurses at other sites that direct the health promotion activities and can also do glucose/cholesterol screenings."

Of the approximately 1,100 Bank One employees, 330 take advantage of the fitness center programs, said Ryan Williams, human resources business partner at Bank One.

A company pays between $90,000 to $125,000 per year for fitness center management, Giesler said. The cost of having a company such as MediFit manage a fitness center depends upon many variables and options selected, including "number of employees at the site, services the company is wanting, how much staff supervision is needed. Some facilities don't mind if people workout with no one there. Here we are staffed every hour we are open," Giesler said.

Personal training, personalized exercise programs, group exercise classes, incentive programming to keep people motivated, health promotion services like blood pressure screening and fitness fairs are all part of what Bank One's fitness center provides employees, said Giesler.

"The center has state-of-the-art equipment, an aerobics room, and locker facilities," Williams said.

Giesler said such centers help "to decrease health care costs, provide a less stressful environment, have a more productive and healthful employee, less sickness, less turnover, better attitudes. A lot of times fitness centers are used as part of the company benefits package as a marketing tool to keep and get the best employees."

Kelly stressed convenience as a good reason. "The convenience it's hard to emphasize how important that is for people. We all make excuses to get out of exercising if it is an extra stop."

Convenience is further addressed by MediFit which offers businesses the option of Web-based physical activity programs through ActivePursuit. com, if a contracting company opts for that service. The service is described on the Web site as a "virtual physical activity behavior change center."

"ActivePursuit is being piloted at the Bank One in Wilmington, Del., and will be evaluated at that point. So, we may have it here in Springfield in the near future," Giesler said.

HealthMedia is another online health option.

"HealthMedia involves the online health promotion (smoking cessation, weight management, nutrition) and ActivePursuit is the online fitness center," Giesler said.

"If a company can't invest all the money needed for an on-site fitness center, they can purchase the online programs so their people can have motivation that way," said Giesler.

The privacy and convenience of online sessions is also a plus, Giesler said.

Whether a business seeks fitness help for employees via the Internet or through providing an on-site company fitness center, the impact goes beyond improving the health of an employee.

"We feel, as a bank, that a healthier employee could be more productive and do a better job for our customers," Williams said. "The fitness center also attracts possible employees in our recruiting efforts. It's an employee satisfier because the center is on-site and convenient for them."