Vital Signs - April 2001

Lifesigns of Las Vegas

Executive Physicals Can Be a Life-Saving Perk

by Tina Allen

Last year when Lou Bailey decided to get a complete physical, she never would have guessed it would be a life-saving decision. The 62-year-old executive assistant at Boyd Gaming in Las Vegas was thinking more about the benefit of having the physical examinations added to her healthcare plan. "I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, we are going to get physicals,’" she said. "What a wonderful, wonderful perk." Boyd contracted with Lifesigns of Las Vegas, which specializes in comprehensive physical examinations, to conduct employee physicals. A mammogram during the physical at Lifesigns detected breast cancer — a discovery that likely saved the life of Bailey, who is now cancer-free.

"Going to Lifesigns proved to be the right thing to do," Bailey said.

But Boyd is not alone in deciding to offer examinations for employees. Dr. Allen B. Adolphe, the director of clinical trials at Lifesigns, said many executives throughout the nation are now required by their corporations to have an annual physical. "Employers have found they can’t do without these individuals," Adolphe said. "They have made the decision that having a wellness examination is critical." And, the companies are no longer just limiting healthcare coverage for physical examinations to executives. Adolphe said an undeniable trend in recent years is corporations offering wellness benefits to virtually all their employees.

Doing so also allows businesses to save significant expenditures for their healthcare program. For every dollar a business spends on preventive medicine, it saves two that would have had to be spent on treatment, Adolphe said. These two premises — helping Americans live healthier lives and assisting businesses to save money —constitute the Lifesigns mission. "What we do is identify risks for heart disease, for cancer, for unhealthy lifestyles like smoking and abusing alcohol," Adolphe said. "We also have the ability to get these people into care, which may not be something they are thinking about doing on their own."

The Lifesigns Las Vegas office on West Lake Mead Boulevard opened in October 1999. The company now boasts physical examination contracts with some of the largest corporations in the Valley, such as Station Casinos and others primarily in the construction industry, said Joan Rink, account executive for Lifesigns. In addition, the center also welcomes insured or self-paying individual patients by appointment.

Part of Lifesigns‘ successful business model is reducing the time it takes for today’s busy worker to find the time for a physical. Traditionally in the private sector, it has taken two or three days to have a full physical examination, as the patient travels from one office to another for blood work, stress tests, chest X-rays, eye exams and more. Rink said Lifesigns has reduced that time to about two to three hours. It does so by having a team of specialists available at one site, where they have access to state-of-the- art equipment. "There is no waiting time for the patients," Rink said.

The business was founded nine years ago by Dr. Otis Plunk, a former emergency medicine director and private practitioner in Missouri. He opened the first office in Nashville, Tenn., which now serves as company headquarters. Besides Las Vegas, the company has offices in Memphis and Atlanta.

The company prides itself on its personable approach to medicine — something Adolphe refers to as a "Marcus Welby approach with a modern twist." After all the tests are performed on patients, physicians sit down with them to individually discuss any problems or concerns. Patients are later given a Lifecard, a wallet-sized microfilm summary of their complete medical records. If they need further treatment, they are referred to primary care physicians.

Adolphe said giving workers preventive physicals reduces absenteeism and makes for a healthier, more productive workforce. More importantly though, it saves lives. In Las Vegas alone, Lifesigns has detected a variety of illnesses in patients, including thyroid cancer in 10 people and aortic aneurysms in several others. For Bailey, the diagnosis of cancer on Valentine’s Day last year came unexpectedly. She had never had any major health problems and has routine mammograms every year.

"In these days of HMOs and PPOs, I think so many relationships with your personal physicians have kind of disappeared," she said. "You start feeling like a number, and don’t get to know your physicians like you did a number of years ago. At Lifesigns, I was not a number."

Tina Allen