Employers with onsite clinics can integrate clinic data with health plan data to identify high-risk patients, care coordination and comprehensive outcomes measurement. (Photo: Shutterstock)
Forget the days of taking the morning (or entire day) off from work to drive across town and sit in the waiting area of the doctor's office. How about just popping down the hall to the clinic? More employers, recognizing that making access to health care more convenient is good not just for employees but for their own bottom line, are investing in worksite clinics.
So says a new survey from the National Association of Worksite Health Centers and Benfield, part of the Gallagher Human Resources & Compensation Consulting Practice. Of the 109 responding employers, 80 said they have a worksite clinic, while 29 do not. Nearly 80 percent have 5,000 or more employees, and nearly 40 percent are manufacturers.
Sixty-three percent of jumbo employers offer onsite clinics, while 16 percent offer near-site and 21 percent offer some combination to employees at multiple locations. And signs of growth are in the works, with 51 percent of employers who already have a worksite clinic planning to add an additional one—either onsite or near-site—within two years, and 45 percent of those who don't have a clinic planning to add one within two years.
They don't necessarily share their facilities, though, with only 12 percent saying they share an onsite clinic with other organizations—but 63 percent say they do share a near-site clinic with others. Employers with clinics do, however, allow all workers enrolled in their health plan to use their clinic. In addition, more than half also allow spouses and dependents to have access to clinic services.
Clinics' growth areas include telehealth, physical therapy, chronic disease management and behavioral health, and 45 percent of clinics are managed by a clinic vendor; 29 percent of employers run it themselves and 26 percent use a community health provider such as a health system, hospital or medical group.
More than half provide worksite pharmacy services.
Employers value such clinics for their employees who lack a primary care provider, with 30 percent creating a medical home model. And interestingly, when deciding on whether to provide a clinic, only 5 percent of employers expressed concern about liability issues or the potential of their clinic being counted toward the Cadillac tax.
The majority of employers find the data from their clinics useful for integration with health plan data to identify high-risk patients, care coordination and comprehensive outcomes measurement. That said, and while 95 percent are pleased with clinic outcomes, only a quarter or even fewer actually measure their clinics' impact on such factors as absence, disability and productivity—perhaps the reasons they chose to offer a clinic in the first place.
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Marlene Satter
Marlene Y. Satter has worked in and written about the financial industry for decades.
