What's Next in Medical Costs - The On-Site Clinic Is Back...

With health care costs rising 7-9% each year, any HR person who thinks like a business owner is looking for ways to manage costs, if to do nothing but attempt to minimize the annual trend increase in costs. 

Big ideas from past years to help you do that.  Carve out your Rx plan to gain deeper discounts, wellness programs, call-in services like Tele-Doc to minimize the need for a primary care visit and the lost productivity that is part of that visit, etc.  What did I miss?  There are only a few tools, a few good ideas that can help you control costs without a drop in care.

So, what's next?  Would you believe the on-site doctor?  The situation with medical costs has now escalated to the point where it now makes sense to bring the doctor back on the campus of big companies.  Warning - if you don't have at least 1,000 employees at a location or in your company, this one isn't for you.

From Business Week:

"When a company unveils a new plan to rein in health-care costs, workers usually groan. Yet Toyota Motor (TM) is getting rave reviews for the on-site medical center it built at its truck factory in San Antonio. Ask line worker Louis Aguillon. He went to the clinic in May with nagging back pain, and paid just $5 for the visit. "I saw the doctor for 20 minutes," Aguillon beams. "You're not just a number there."

A recent study by benefits-consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide (WW) found that 32% of all employers with more than 1,000 workers either have an on-site medical center or plan to build one by 2009. "We're talking about a microcosm of health-care reform," says Hal Rosenbluth, president of Walgreen's health and wellness division. "Companies can take control and understand their health-care costs."

Managers of on-site centers such as Toyota's make a variety of bold claims. Rosenbluth says every dollar invested in setting up a clinic will return $3 to $5, even though on-site doctors spend an average of 20 minutes with each patient—more than double the national average for primary-care physicians. Some of the biggest savings are on referrals to specialists and visits to emergency rooms, where the financial burden falls mainly on the worker's employer. Peter Hotz, president of Take Care Employer Solutions, the on-site medical division of Walgreen, says the clinic-management companies Walgreen acquired refer 40% fewer patients to specialists, compared to the primary-care physicians who treated the workers previously. And emergency room visits are down 72% at companies where Take Care is managing medical facilities."

So that's the big trend for 2009.  If you're a small company?  Best you can do is a service like Tele-Doc, where your employees can phone in for a diagnosis, then get medication prescribed over the phone for about 80% of the things that ail them.

I'm taking a guess here - but maybe the next trend will be real estate owners, who lease space in big office parks, jumping on this model as a benefit for their tenets.  Anywhere you can aggregate 1,000 employees might be a match for the model...

Comments

[Brian]

We help administer and setup on site clinics for employers. We have a client that has 315 employees and implemented an on site clinic over a year ago. They cut their annual health care budget by nearly 30% over the course of the first year. Over 60% of the employees have utilized the clinic. On site clinics will work for groups that have less than 1000 employees. We have additional clients of 750, 425, and 850 employees that all have employed an on site clinic. The key is that the clinic need to be able to be scaled to fit the needs of the particular client. This concept is and can truly change the health care trends in this country.

[Careprost]

Hola,
Ha hecho un trabajo muy bueno. Hay muchas personas en busca de eso ahora van a encontrar suficientes fuentes por tus consejos, Careprost
espera para obtener más consejos acerca de que,
regards,
Careprost, Online Careprost

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