On Jan. 15, 2008, McKee Foods contracted with Comprehensive Health Services, Inc. (CHS) to manage its personal health clinics at its manufacturing facilities at Gentry, Ark., and Stuarts Draft, Va., as well as its off-site clinic near the corporate headquarters at Collegedale, Tenn. CHS is a leading national workforce health management company that specializes in health care programs.
Tucked into a cluster of buildings near an overgrown field in Tunica County is a fully staffed clinic that provides basic health care to employees of Harrah’s Entertainment Inc. and their families.
The casino operator’s decision to run a company clinic illustrates a national trend. As health care costs continue to rise, increasing numbers of large employers are operating job-site clinics in the hopes that easy access will lead workers to get preventive care and avoid medical meltdowns that lead to long absences from work and big insurance claims.
The concept of offering health care at work is not new, but many firms are moving away from an “occupational health” model that focuses on tasks such as treating on-the-job injuries.
Now, the clinics are acting as employees’ primary-care doctors, doing everything from vaccinations to caring for chronic diseases like diabetes.
One of the hottest trends in health care is on-site clinics to handle routine medical needs. Companies that set up facilities at the workplace find that workers take less time off, get more of the screenings and coaching they need to avoid costly illnesses and save lots of money. The services often are free to employees and sometimes are offered to spouses and dependents as well. When clinics do charge, the fee is below the rate for the same service at a doctor’s office.
On-site clinics are generally staffed by physicians and nurses, who usually treat minor injuries and illnesses, such as the flu, earaches, minor cuts, etc. The clinics also provide X-ray and pharmaceutical services.
Most employers use outside contractors to run these facilities. The big three providers are Comprehensive Health Services, CHD Meridian and Whole Health Management. Comprehensive Health Services says clients usually see a positive return on their investments within two years, ranging as high as $4 for every $1 a company spends. The largest savings come from avoiding emergency room visits.
Frustrated by runaway health costs, the nation’s largest employers are moving rapidly to open more primary care medical centers in their offices and factories as a way to offer convenient service and free or low-cost health care.
Within the last two years, companies including Toyota, Sprint Nextel, Florida Power and Light, Credit Suisse and Pepsi Bottling Group have opened or expanded on-site clinics. And many employers are adding or planning to add even more clinics, which were experimented with about 30 years ago but fell out of favor amid questions about their cost-effectiveness.
Today a new wave of clinics is opening, driven largely by a motive that was less of a factor in the past: employers’ desires to reduce their health insurance premiums by taking care of workers before they need to see outside doctors. More than 100 of the nation’s 1,000 largest employers now offer on-site primary care or preventive health services — a number forecast to exceed 250 by the end of the year, according to David Beech, a health benefits consultant.
Corporate America’s new in-house medical offices go well beyond traditional occupational health clinics that hundreds of factories have long maintained for job-related injuries and worker’s compensation cases. Employees can now stop by for check-ups, allergy and flu shots, pregnancy tests or routine monitoring for chronic diseases like diabetes and asthma.
When prescription drugs are required, some employers arrange for the pills to be delivered the next day at the office or plant, while others even maintain fully stocked pharmacies.
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