Skipping a $100 screening can lead to a $100,000 claim — preventive care is a CFO’s best financial defense.
Only half of American adults attended a routine medical appointment or cancer screening in the past year — a 10-point drop since 2024. For CFOs, an unengaged workforce is an unmanaged risk pool. Skipped screenings today become catastrophic claims tomorrow. Three actions — incentivized screenings, vaccinations, and healthy lifestyle programs — can lower the ceiling on future healthcare spend.
A routine preventive screening typically costs around $100 per employee. In contrast, treating stage 4 cancer can easily exceed $100,000. Yet, when corporate budgets tighten, employee health & wellbeing initiatives are often the first to be cut.
As it stands, only half of American adults have attended a routine medical appointment or cancer screening in the past year – a 10-percentage-point drop since 2024.
As a CFO, this data should worry you. This is a high-cost medical event waiting to happen, and it’s going to hit your business hard – if you don’t act now.
3 preventive actions you can take to avoid high-cost medical claims
Incentivize screenings: Make the annual check-up a non-negotiable by tying it to premium differentials or HSA contributions. At Personify Health, employees earn 500 platform points for taking 3 preventive actions!
Promote vaccinations: Reduce the seasonal absence & productivity dip caused by flu and COVID.
Support healthy lifestyle programs: Physical activity, weight management and smoking cessation are not vanity projects; they are risk reduction strategies for some of the leading killers in the United States: heart disease and stroke.
For a CFO, an unengaged workforce is essentially an unmanaged risk pool. When employees skip preventive care, your costs grow exponentially.
A 10-percentage-point drop in screenings represents a growing backlog of undiagnosed, chronic conditions that will eventually hit your claims data as high-cost, catastrophic events.
By focusing on preventive care today, you aren’t just “doing the right thing” for employees—you are actively lowering the ceiling on your future healthcare spend and improving the predictability of your P&L.
There are more ways to drive health & wellbeing ROI…
Download The CFO Playbook: 7 strategic plays to drive health & wellbeing ROI to learn how to:
- Tackle high-cost claims with smarter care management
- Get ahead of GLP-1s and pharmacy costs
- Strengthen payment integrity with AI
- Find a smarter Plan Administrator (or make yours work harder for you)
- Showcase ROI with ease
