A workforce health screening with Palm House Hospitality, and what it means for every hotel and restaurant group trying to hold onto good people.
Hospitality runs on people.
The front desk employee who remembers a guest's name. The line cook who trained three other cooks. The housekeeper who has worked the same floor for six years.
When they leave, a business doesn't just lose a role. It loses the thing that made the experience good.
And hospitality loses people fast:
Employers try to fix this with pay, schedules, and perks. Those matter. But one factor gets less attention: whether employees are healthy enough, and supported enough, to keep showing up.
In July 2026, MiSalud screened Palm House Hospitality's team across everyday health markers: weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar.
The pattern wasn't unusual. It's what we see across hospitality and other shift-based industries: risk that looks manageable alone, but shows up in the same employees, stacked.
None of it looks urgent by itself. Together, it adds up, for the employee and the business.
Unmanaged health doesn't wait for open enrollment. It shows up as a missed shift. A slower recovery after a long night. A person who's tired in a way that causes a whole day of small mistakes to compound.
Hospitality shifts don't look like a typical nine-to-five. They start before sunrise and end after midnight.
But the schedule is only part of it. The culture of hospitality plays a role too.
People in this industry spend their careers filling everyone else's cup before their own. The guest comes first. The team comes first. The operation comes first. Personal health naturally falls to the bottom of the list.
Taking time off carries weight here. When someone steps away, a teammate has to cover their station. Even when care is legitimately needed, it can feel like letting the team down.
The economics make it harder. Restaurants and hotels run tightly staffed. Every shift is planned precisely, so losing someone for a few hours has an immediate operational impact. And for hourly employees, one appointment can mean transportation, waiting rooms, the visit itself, and lost wages or tips. That's a meaningful barrier, not a small one.
Traditional healthcare wasn't built for any of this. Hospitality people work nights, weekends, early mornings, and holidays. A system that runs Monday through Friday during business hours doesn't align with how they live and work.
Here's the bigger truth: hospitality is an industry built around taking care of other people. But historically, it hasn't made it easy for its own people to receive care.
That's why unmanaged health and high turnover show up in the same industries:
5x higher medical costs for employees managing overlapping risk factors (weight, blood sugar, blood pressure) versus one alone. (Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy, 2025)
$3,900 per employee, per year. That's what unmanaged health already costs the average U.S. employer in lost productivity, before any of it shows up as a claim. (Integrated Benefits Institute)
The good news: this is one of the more fixable parts of the retention problem.
MiSalud builds care around how hospitality actually works, not around office hours. Here's what that means on a real shift:
Care that fits the schedule. An employee can speak with a health provider during a meal break, before or after a shift, or from home. Nobody has to choose between getting care and supporting their team. 44% of MiSalud coaching sessions happen outside standard business hours.
No travel required. A 20-minute healthcare conversation shouldn't cost two or three hours of transportation and waiting rooms. Virtual-first care removes that math entirely.
Whole Family Care. Coverage extends to the employee plus up to three family members. A sick child or spouse affects attendance just as much as the employee being sick. Supporting the household supports the employee, and ultimately the operation.
Earlier intervention. Addressing an issue early is far better for the person and the business than waiting until it becomes an urgent care visit, a missed weekend, or an extended absence.
The results follow:
That's not because the benefit exists on paper. It's because people actually use it.
"At Palm House Hospitality, our business is built around taking care of people. But we realized there was a disconnect: the people spending every day taking care of our guests and each other didn't always have a healthcare model designed around their lives. We wanted a partner that understood that healthcare for a hospitality employee has to fit around the realities of hospitality, not ask hospitality employees to fit themselves into a traditional healthcare system."
Benson Wang, CEO, Palm House Hospitality
If your workforce looks anything like Palm House Hospitality's, hospitality, retail, manufacturing, or any industry built on hourly and shift-based work, this same pattern is likely playing out.
Some of it shows up in your turnover numbers. Most of it stays invisible until someone looks.
A screening won't fix turnover by itself. But it's a fast, low-lift way to see where the risk actually sits, before it shows up as a resignation.
Let's discuss what a workforce health screening could impact for your teams
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (JOLTS, leisure & hospitality sector); Society for Human Resource Management, Human Capital Benchmarking Report; Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy, systematic literature review, 2025; Integrated Benefits Institute, "Poor Health Costs US Employers $575 Billion," 2020.
