Can We Boost Onsite Health Clinic ROI Through Increased Utilization?
Tue, Aug 11, 2009
Employer Health Costs, Featured, Occupational Health, Onsite Health Clinic, Primary Care
In a bottom line economy, companies are eyeballing ROI (return on investment) more carefully than ever. Each investment needs to demonstrate optimal bang for its buck, and nowhere is that more true than in the arena of employer health care.
Onsite health clinics are a great way to decrease employer healthcare costs, but can improve employee health and productivity as well. Not only is this a cost effective healthcare option for companies, but it becomes increasingly cost-effective in direct proportion to employee utilization.
How does this work? How does using something more make it cost less? It’s simple math. Let’s say a family of four makes four visits to a physician’s office. The insurance card goes over the counter and the family is charged $20 for each co-payment, for a total of $80. Then the remaining $80 per visit is charged to the employer’s health plan. The employer has just incurred $320 in medical expenses. When you add in the family’s $80t, that’s a total outlay of $400 for what likely amounts to one hour of a physician’s time. On the other hand, compare that to one hour of physician time at an on-site health clinic, which would cost $145.
In other words, a company can pay $320 for a family of four to visit the doctor, or they can pay $145 to have the doctor visit the office.
You can see there’s a significant return on investment, even with one family of four. It’s well under half. And the great part is, the more people who utilize the clinic this way, the more health care dollars are saved.
Another benefit of high level utilization is early detection. Often having a convenient onsite health clinic gets people in to visit a doctor when they otherwise might not have gone. In the short term, the primary costs do go up, but in the long term, money is saved in dramatic amounts when serious undiagnosed health conditions are caught and treated early.
Although with onsite clinics there is a rise in primary care cost percentages, the overall claims costs decrease significantly because you head off health catastrophes. If you catch things on the front end, you can avoid many crises such as surgery, diabetic coma or cholesterol so high it’s a cardiac problem. We’ve literally had nurses send patients directly from the clinic to a hospital because of a high blood pressure reading. It may have been a heart attack waiting to happen.
Workplace Health Services can help large companies reduce employer health costs and help employees reduce the likelihood of serious illnesses. If you would like more information, you can call us at (866) 612-2848 or , and we’ll be in touch.
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Tags: corporate healthcare, Healthcare Advocacy, Onsite Health Clinic
Jill Mercer is the Business Development Manager at Workplace Health Services. She understands what information business owners, CFOs and HR Executives need to purchase healthcare services, and how to provide a practical and robust solution within a budget.
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