UnitedHealthcare announced a program to encourage people across the country to improve their health by walking, enabling eligible plan participants to obtain Apple Watch® by meeting daily walking goals.
For the first time, Apple Watch will be integrated into UnitedHealthcare Motion®, a national digital wellness program that provides eligible plan participants access to activity trackers that can enable them to earn up to $1,000 per year by meeting certain daily walking goals*.
Eligible participants will be able to receive and start using Apple Watch (initially paying only tax and shipping), with the option to apply program earnings toward the full purchase price of the device. Program participants will be able to own – with a zero balance – the world’s No. 1 smart watch in as little as six months by meeting daily walking goals. UnitedHealthcare Motion participants who already own Apple Watch will be also able to use it with the program.
Since UnitedHealthcare Motion’s inception, participants have collectively walked more than 180 billion steps and earned nearly $30 million in rewards. Among eligible employees, 66 percent registered their devices, with nearly two-thirds of those active with the program.
“UnitedHealthcare Motion is part of our consumer-focused strategy that is driving toward a simple, integrated, mobile-centric ecosystem that delivers value to consumers,” said Steve Nelson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare. “Smart watches and activity trackers stand alongside transparency in physician selection and medical costs, easy virtual visits with health care professionals, and digital coaching and online wellness programs, all of which are designed to support consumers in enhancing their health and improving how they navigate the health care system.”
UnitedHealthcare Motion is available to employers with self-funded and fully insured health plans nationwide. The program enables employees to earn up to $4 per day in financial incentives based on achieving F.I.T. goals*:
- Frequency: complete 500 steps within seven minutes six times per day, at least an hour apart;
- Intensity: complete 3,000 steps within 30 minutes; and
- Tenacity: complete 10,000 total steps each day.
Apple Watch is available through UnitedHealthcare Motion and enables users to see how they are tracking against the program’s three daily F.I.T. goals, helping integrate physical activity and engagement with their health plan. Research shows people who consistently achieve the F.I.T. goals tend to improve their health and reduce their medical expenses1.
Apple Watch is a health and fitness companion with intelligent coaching features, and water resistance, and now with Apple Watch Series 3, it also features an altimeter. The program’s F.I.T. targets are set in the UnitedHealthcare Motion app, which integrates with HealthKit to use data from Apple Watch to track daily goals.
* Financial incentives may be less due to limits under applicable laws.
About UnitedHealthcare
UnitedHealthcare is dedicated to helping people live healthier lives and making the health system work better for everyone by simplifying the health care experience, meeting consumer health and wellness needs, and sustaining trusted relationships with care providers. In the United States, UnitedHealthcare offers the full spectrum of health benefit programs for individuals, employers, and Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, and contracts directly with more than 1.2 million physicians and care professionals, and 6,500 hospitals and other care facilities nationwide. The company also provides health benefits and delivers care to people through owned and operated health care facilities in South America. UnitedHealthcare is one of the businesses of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), a diversified health care company. For more information, visit UnitedHealthcare at www.uhc.com or follow @UHC on Twitter.
1 Savvy Sherpa. Dishman, R. et al. 2013. Physical Activity Epidemiology. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
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