Healthcare: Employers Weigh Onsite Clinics As Insured Ranks Set To Grow
By Dinah Wisenberg Brin Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
Five minutes from the main headquarters of the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, employees of the Florida law-enforcement agency can, at no cost to them, swiftly see a doctor in a new medical center equipped with gun lockers and space to doff boots and bullet-proof vests.
If the physician prescribes medicine, an officer can leave with drug in hand.
The two-month-old West Palm Beach medical office, operated and staffed by health insurer Cigna Corp. (CI) solely for the sheriff’s department’s 4,100 employees, reflects a growing interest among employers in improving employee access to health care and offering services aimed at improving overall health and productivity.
Interest in such facilities may intensify as some 32 million uninsured Americans are poised to gain coverage in the next few years under the new health overhaul, exacerbating what many experts see as a growing U.S. physician shortage that can hinder access to good medical care and lengthen waits to see a doctor.
“I would expect the primary-care shortage to worsen,” said Thomas Richards, Cigna’s senior vice president for U.S. products and leader of the insurer’s implementation of the health overhaul law. In response, some large employers are considering putting clinics on site, according to Richards.
“I think that trend will grow as employers look at employees needing to take time off to sit and wait for a doctor,” he said.
Cigna runs 22 employer health centers ranging in services from health-coaching to primary care, and provides a workplace health center for its own employees.
Drug-store chain Walgreen Co. (WAG), the industry leader in workplace health services after buying the two largest site operators in 2008, runs some 380 centers that vary in scope from fitness centers to pharmacies to nurse-practitioner or physician care. More than half are staffed by physicians, according to Peter Hotz, group vice president for Walgreen’s health and wellness division.
While the recession dampened growth following the purchases, in the last 12 months “we’ve seen demand pick up quite a bit because companies realize that these services save them money, both in the short term and in the long term,” Hotz said. Walgreen has seen growth across the board, he said, including a healthy uptick in physician-directed sites.
Walgreen, with such workplace health-center clients as Walt Disney Co. (DIS) and Toyota Motor Corp. (TM), expects to see steady, double-digit percentage growth in the number of sites, Hotz told Dow Jones Newswires.
“There is a concern about the shortage of primary-care physicians,” he said.
A Walgreen spokesman cited a 2008 Fuld & Co. research paper that estimated onsite clinics then served 4% of people under age 65 in the U.S., and predicted they will serve more than 10% of that population by 2015. Fuld reported that 24 vendors then were managing some 2,200 clinics for 1,200 clients, and said such centers can cut employers’ health costs.
Walgreen clients pay for the costs of running the facilities, plus a management fee, so there’s no incentive for doctors to see a certain number of patients. That aligns the interests of the facility with employers, Hotz said. Some clients provide health-center access for dependents as well as employees.
