UnitedHealthcare Motion, an employer-sponsored wellness program, is telling its participants they can get a free Apple Watch if they meet the insurer’s daily walking goals over a six-month period.
Participants can start receiving and using the Apple Watch (initially paying only tax and shipping) and then apply program earnings toward the purchase price of the device. Participants may be able to own, with a zero balance, an Apple Watch after approximately six months of meeting daily walking goals, the insurer announced this week. If members already own an Apple Watch, they can use the one they have.
UnitedHealthcare Motion, since 2015, has been providing eligible plan participants access to wearables that may help them earn over $1,000 per year by meeting certain daily walking goals. Since the program’s inception, participants have collectively walked more than 235 billion steps and earned nearly $38 million in rewards, according to officials.
Program participants can now use the Apple Watch to see how they are tracking against the program’s three daily goals—frequency, intensity, and tenacity—helping integrate physical activity and engagement with their health plan.
Indeed, UnitedHealthcare Motion is available to employers with self-funded and fully insured health plans across the country. The program may enable employees to earn up to $4 per day in financial incentives based on achieving FIT 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.
“This program is part of UnitedHealthcare’s broader effort to provide people with wearables, digital resources and financial incentives that help them take charge of their health, better manage chronic conditions and make care more affordable,” officials noted.
Indeed, these efforts build on UnitedHealthcare’s existing consumer offerings, powered by Rally, which have enabled people to earn more than $1 billion in health-related financial incentives since 2016, the insurer stated.
Among all eligible UnitedHealthcare Motion participants, more than 45 percent participated in the program—compared to some other employer-sponsored disease-management programs that report 5 percent engagement rates.
Among people who registered their device, 59 percent stayed active for at least six months, a rate higher than gym memberships (29 percent). Current program participants walk an average of nearly 12,000 steps, or more than twice the approximately 5,200 steps logged by the average American adult, officials said.
The program has been particularly appealing to eligible participants with chronic conditions. People with such a diagnosis are 20 percent more likely to participate, and people who have diabetes are 40 percent more likely to participate than those who do not, according to the insurer.
As CNBC’s Christina Farr speculated in a story that broke the day before the UnitedHealthcare announcement, “The integration with UnitedHealthcare, which is the largest U.S. healthcare company, could mean a boost in sales of the Apple Watch as more people are able to buy it at an affordable price.”
It was reported last year that another major health insurer, Aetna, which already offers the Apple Watch to its employees as part of a wellness program, has also been in talks with Apple about pushing the wearable device to the health insurer’s members, according to a report in CNBC.
About a month ago, UnitedHealth Group’s CEO said on an earnings call that the insurer would be unveiling a “fully integrated and fully portable individual health record” by the end of next year, with the Rally digital platform serving as the base for development.
