The costs of an enhanced employee assistance program (EAP) intervention

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the economic costs of an enhanced Employee Assistance Program (EAP) intervention being delivered through a large Midwestern EAP that services over 90 worksites. Resource use and cost estimates are determined for both developmental and implementation activities. In addition, enhanced services costs are compared with total and average costs of standard EAP services. The results show that total developmental costs were $44,000 and implementation costs for the first rear of the intervention were S140,000. The annual cost per eligible employee for standard EAP services is $22.92 and the incremental annual cost per eligible employee for enhanced services is $5.01 under full implementation. These findings provide benchmark cost estimates for other EAPs that may be considering offering enhanced services. In future work, cost estimates will be combined with intervention outcomes for additional program evaluation. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.