What is an Onsite Healthcare Facility?

Imagine yourself at work, you are beside yourself coughing, sneezing and blowing your nose relentlessly into hysterics. You feel a chill, some goose bumps, and a slight dizziness.  Your phone rings, it’s your primary care physician saying “Dennis, please come see me as soon as possible.”  You gather yourself, dreading the move out of your seat and you make your way down the hall into an adjoining office.  You are greeted by your primary care physician.  Does that sound too good to be true? Onsite healthcare facilities are starting to populate within the core work environment and surprisingly they are becoming an employer’s best friend.

With the new Affordable Care Act, companies with fifty or more employees must provide adequate healthcare for all full-time workers.  This leads to the question, “will companies pay more money to supply healthcare to all?”  What if your company could combine saving money and delivering healthcare access without your employees leaving work?  Think of the benefits this would provide. 

First, employees with access to a provider at their office would develop a personal relationship with that provider, and would be able to identify concerns, create healthy strategies and encourage a change in patient behavior.  Providers will be fully aware of each case and highly sensitive to each patient’s needs.  Detecting symptoms early is paramount to minimizing (or possibly eliminating) any illness.  With daily visits and ongoing diagnosis, you could attack symptoms at the most treatable stages.

Secondly, with access to onsite providers your employees will live a healthier lifestyle.  With preventative measures and wellness programs, your employees will have less sick days away from their job and more time being productive at work, therefore reducing healthcare costs.    

How does it work managing onsite healthcare?  Take for example Walgreens and its Take Care Health Systems subsidiary, which manages approximately 400 worksite health centers using the Complete Care and Well-Being Health Service Network.  They deliver personal primary care coverage based on the needs of their client using special short term providers, better known as “locum tenens” providers. 

These locum tenens providers are unique.  They are physicians and/or mid-levels who are board certified in different specialties and who have different healthcare experiences.  Locum tenens providers can work for a day, a week, a month or as long as you like. They deliver onsite health and wellness screenings, primary care, occupational medicine, medical exams, flu shots, x-rays, pain medication and physical therapy to address acute and chronic health conditions.  The benefit for the Walgreens Network is that they can add or subtract locum tenens providers based on what service is needed and how many providers are warranted. From the Walgreens perspective, “Together, we work to customize your health and wellness initiatives so they complement the specific needs of your company.”

In summary, companies should embrace the onsite healthcare model as a possible solution to reducing healthcare costs.  It will reduce the employee’s time away from their desk and create healthier employees while reducing healthcare costs due to fewer claims. On the flip side, employees will enjoy a better lifestyle benefiting from less time spent in waiting rooms, more opportunities to be productive at work while still having immediate access to their doctor next door.

Is it time to prescribe an Onsite Healthcare Facility for your company?  

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Written by: 

Dennis Webb, Director of Business Development at Medestar

Phone: 214-932-1414

Email: dennis.webb@medestar.com

Website: www.medestar.com 

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