{"id":5876,"date":"2011-09-01T16:18:21","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T20:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencebusiness.technewslit.com\/?p=5876"},"modified":"2011-09-01T16:18:21","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T20:18:21","slug":"insomnia-costs-u-s-employers-billions-in-lost-productivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/?p=5876","title":{"rendered":"Insomnia Costs U.S. Employers Billions in Lost Productivity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sleep<\/a>
(VA.gov)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Researchers from universities, hospitals, and companies in the U.S. and Europe calculated the lost productivity of Americans suffering from insomnia<\/a> at an annual cost of $63.2 billion to employers. Their findings from the study, funded by the pharmaceutical company Merck, appear in the 1 September issue of the journal Sleep<\/em><\/a> (paid subscription required).<\/p>\n

The team analyzed data collected from more than 7,400 employed health plan subscribers, as part of the American Insomnia Study<\/a> (AIS) conducted by Harvard Medical School in 2008-2009. Participants were asked about sleep habits and work attendance and performance, using standard international measures, such as the World Health Organization’s Health and Work Performance Questionnaire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From the AIS data, the researchers estimated the prevalence of insomnia at 23.2 percent among employees overall. The results indicate working women have a higher rate (27.2%) of insomnia than their male counterparts (19.7%), with older workers (14.3%) significantly less likely to suffer from insomnia.<\/p>\n

Employees with a high school education (25.3%) or some college education (26.4%) showed higher rates of insomnia, while staff with less than a high-school education (19.9%) and college graduates (21.5%) were less likely to experience insomnia.<\/p>\n

The lost productivity due to insomnia resulted from workers coming to work tired or sick — called presenteeism — rather than missing work through absenteeism. The researchers calculated the lost workplace productivity per individual at 11.3 days or $2,280. On an aggregate annualized basis, the lost productivity from insomnia is estimated at 252.7 days and $63.2 billion.<\/p>\n

Co-author James Walsh of the Sleep Medicine and Research Center at St. Luke’s Hospital in St. Louis notes that treatments for insomnia range from about $200 a year for a generic sleeping pill to up to $1,200 for behavioral therapy.<\/p>\n

The study’s lead author Ronald Kessler of Harvard University’s medical school says “It’s an under-appreciated problem. Americans are not missing work because of insomnia. They are still going to their jobs but accomplishing less because they\u2019re tired.” Kessler adds, “In an information-based economy, it’s difficult to find a condition that has a greater effect on productivity.”<\/p>\n

Read more:\u00a0Water Cooled Cap Helps Relieve Primary Insomnia<\/a><\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers from universities, hospitals, and companies in the U.S. and Europe calculated the lost productivity of Americans suffering from insomnia at an annual cost of $63.2 billion to employers. Their findings from the study, funded by the pharmaceutical company Merck, appear in the 1 September issue of the journal Sleep (paid subscription required). The team […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,16,5],"tags":[31,53,45,27,129,26],"class_list":["post-5876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hiringlayoffs","category-ventures","category-regulations","tag-biomedical","tag-economics","tag-europe","tag-pharmaceuticals","tag-statistics","tag-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5876"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5879,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876\/revisions\/5879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}