The Doctor Comes to You

The National Business Group on Health recently released a survey on the prevalence of on-site clinics among U.S. employers with more than 1,000 employees. Of those surveyed, 23 percent reported offering on-site medical services in 2007, while 29 percent plan to offer a program next year.

“These clinics are also an opportunity to provide services in a more cost-effective way,” said Helen Darling, president of the Washington lobbying group. “They will have limited services, and the patient won’t get a lot of extra costly services, which the employer would have had to pay for.”

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that the premiums businesses pay for their workers’ health care have increased 78 percent since 2001. But creating a medical facility is not exactly a cheap solution to the problem, so the trend is predominantly found among large employers.

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Tom Hopkins was at work when he felt the pain in his chest and abdomen. It seemed minor, but the health professionals at his company’s on-site wellness center urged him to go to the hospital, where doctors found problems with his heart.

Two days later, Hopkins underwent coronary artery bypass surgery. Now enjoying a healthy recovery, he credits the worksite clinic with saving his life.

“If it wasn’t for the clinic, I probably would not have gone to the doctor right away, and who knows what would have happened,” says Hopkins, manager of the Central Florida Market Unit of the Pepsi Bottling Group, in Orlando, Fla.

Stories like Hopkins’ are becoming more common as businesses increasingly adopt a new approach to the old model of employer-sponsored health benefits. Reminiscent of the “company doctor” of years past, today’s trend of providing on-site medical care is building rapidly, experts say, spurred largely by the fact that these on-site facilities enable employers to better manage—and even scale back the growth rate of—their health care expenses.

“I think it’s a modern model that is indeed proving to be cost-effective,” says Sean Sullivan, president, CEO and co-founder of the Institute for Health and Productivity Management, a nonprofit corporation in Scottsdale, Ariz., that works to link employee health to corporate performance. “Not only does it pick up health issues earlier, but it doesn’t require time away from work and at the same time creates a culture of caring.”

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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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