As founder and CEO of GreenMarketplace.com, Josh Knauer has a lot on his mind. And it was affecting his health.
As a remedy, he gets a therapeutic massage every Tuesday.
"It was prescribed by my doctor," he said. "I'm a rather high-stress CEO. For me, it's part of relaxation. It lowers my blood pressure."
But this weekly massage is not a perk reserved for the firm's top dog.
As a benefit to employees, Mr. Knauer created a health plan wherein all full-timers receive monthly allotments, based on their salary, from which they choose health services.
GreenMarketplace offers traditional health coverage plus reimbursement for nontraditional options such as therapeutic massage, health club memberships, yoga, herbal remedies, meditation and other alternative health care services.
"But the cafeteria plan is large enough to have full health coverage and then some," he said. "You don't have to choose between a massage and your health insurance."
He said that the program is very popular among employees.
"And anything that benefits mental and physical employee well-being will benefit us," he said. "They're more eager, alert and healthy and miss fewer days of work," Mr. Knauer said. "It's a very touchy-feely thing, but the economics of it add up."
He declined to state the plan's cost. The privately held company doesn't disclose sales figures, but Mr. Knauer recently said he projects the company could do $100 million in sales within four years.
Christopher Young, senior vice president of Aon Consulting Inc., a Downtown-based employee benefit consulting firm, said GreenMarketplace is following a trend, but is also a pioneer.
"There is a trend going back to flexible benefits, giving employees more options," Mr. Young said. "But these specific benefits are unusual."
While Mr. Young said most employers don't want to add additional benefits because they're concerned about adding costs, the tight labor market may prompt them to do so.
"One of the key factors in helping employees be more loyal is having options in the benefits program," Mr. Young said.
And that's just what Mr. Knauer said he was thinking when he organized the program. Even if the firm, which has six full-time and seven part-time employees, grows larger, Mr. Knauer said the health care plan will remain.
"This will be the health plan in our future," he said.
"This is just too good of a recruitment tool and of an incentive plan, even as our company grows larger," Mr. Knauer said.
Aon's Mr. Young recommended caution be used in the organization of such a plan because of tax issues. While the cost of offering traditional health care benefits are tax deductible, tai chi classes and the like probably are not.
Mr. Knauer said he understands that and is very careful to differentiate and keep track of the health services to keep the Internal Revenue Service placated.
Even creating the health plan took some doing, he said.
"We called and called and called and called," Mr. Knauer said.
Upper St. Clair-based South Hills Financial Group was the only agency they found in Pittsburgh that would take the time to consider GreenMarketplace's objective.
"None of the bigger companies that we talked to understood what we wanted," Mr. Knauer said. "At South Hills, they scratched their heads and said, `That's a challenge,' and looked around and about for what they could do for us. We are very pleased to be trailblazers."
GreenMarketplace may be on the forefront of the business world, but the nation's population has been embracing alternative health care for some time.
According to the Silver Spring, Md.-based National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, approximately 42 percent of U.S. health care consumers spent
$27 billion on complementary and alternative medicine therapies in 1997.
Dr. Stephen Straus, director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, told a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee March 28 that some practices that once were considered unorthodox have proven to be safe and effective. He pointed to acupuncture, which he said is now routinely applied to manage chronic pain and nausea associated with chemotherapy.
"My presence here today, and moreover, NCCAM's very existence, reflects the growing public interest in complementary and alternative medicine (or CAM, as we call it), and the belief that various CAM therapies may play a role in improved public health," Dr. Straus told the subcommittee.
Dr. Straus is asking the federal government for $71.3 million to operate in fiscal year 2001, which is a $3.3 million increase over fiscal year 2000's appropriation.
According to Dr. Straus, as alternative medicine use has increased, the center's task is to study these treatments and their validity.
Unconventional medicine is being discussed as an alternative here in Pittsburgh.
In January, the University of Pittsburgh, UPMC Health System and PhytoMedica Inc. formed the International Traditional Chinese Medicine Center to develop scientific and clinical standards for more widespread use of Chinese medicine practices in the United States.
Executives are working on coordinating research between the new Pittsburgh center and traditional medicine centers located in China.
PhytoMedica, which is developing herbal and other medicines, was founded by Caduceus Capital Health Ventures, a $60 million capital fund in which UPMC Health System is the principal private sector investor.