Your Health Insurer Could Pay You To Take Your Blood Pressure And Weight (Sort Of)

The kiosks at pharmacies where you can take your blood pressure, pulse, and maybe even weigh yourself aren’t just for killing time while you wait for a prescription. Well, they’re mostly for that, but Walmart will be trying out a new rewards card that compensates customers to visit the checkup kiosks to take a few measurements.

The rewards come from health insurance companies, which find data about their customers’ weight, pulse, and blood pressure very valuable. A risk assessment from the kiosk can send a patient back to their doctor if there’s a flag for a potential problem. The data can be sent to their insurance company or directly to their healthcare provider.

Where will you find these kiosks? They’re going where customers are likely to be: Walmart. Insurance companies will send out rewards card and reminders to their customers, encouraging them to visit the kiosks to get free stuff.

Intervening as early as possible when someone has high blood pressure, for example, or encouraging an overweight person to lose even 5% of their body weight can have huge long-term effects on their health… and on their insurance company’s profitability, of course.

The “compensation” will come in the form of unspecified “healthy” rewards, which insurance companies can specify down to the specific item. A reward could be $5 worth of fruit, for example, or a protein bar coupon.

(via Chain Store Age)

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist