Why An Onsite Clinic?
A wealth of data now show that comprehensive onsite clinics, used in combination with a health plan, provide dramatically better care at lower costs, and are an extremely productive investment for any organization.
There are four reasons.
1)
Convenience.
Employees can get care at work, significantly reducing the lost work time required to seek care off-campus. They also offer extended hours, which means that families can get care conveniently as well.
2)
Trading Higher Network Care Costs for Lower Costs Inside the Clinic.
Well-configured clinics can save money by providing equal or better services at much lower cost than you'll pay on the network. Three obvious examples are for primary care visits, drugs and laboratory tests.
3)
Using the Clinic's "Footprint" to Manage Downstream Costs.
Well-run clinics typically have empowered their primary care physicians to provide care in the ways they were trained to do. They also have an array of information technology tools that help identify both patients at risk and who the low and high-performing specialists and care settings are. An activist primary care clinic can advocate for the best possible care for its patients, which typically means more cost-effective as well.
4)
Comprehensive Clinics Provide Care for Standard Health and Occupational Health issues.
Clinics are set up to provide the full range of primary acute, chronic and work-related care. So the benefits that accrue are spread over several areas: group health, workers' compensation, occupational health (like pre-employment screens, drug screens, DOT exams), retention and recruitment (because an onsite clinic is seen as a HUGE benefit), and productivity (i.e., absenteeism and presenteeism).
Most clinic firms report strong savings. Prudent shoppers should ask for past performance data and should check references. The key to your choice of a vendor should be the strength of its medical management model, since that's what determines the quality of care delivered as well as possible savings.