Clearfield » When Futura Industries announced its plan for curbing health costs Jeanette Frandsen was skeptical. Today, she's a living testament to the benefits of the latest trend in workplace wellness, the on-site medical clinic.
Were it not for a routine trip to Futura's clinic in 2011, Frandsen might have put off her mammogram for another year, oblivious to the cancer growing in her right breast. Instead, she caught it early and was able to treat it surgically, sparing her the cost and painful side effects of radiation and chemotherapy.
The clinic's "Dr. Donna saved my life," said Frandsen, the wife of an engineer at Futura.
The company doctor is on the march. Such practices dissolved mid-century, resurfacing in the '80s mostly to treat on-the-job injuries.
Now employers are staffing full-service clinics focused on wellness and prevention. And they're popping up in settings as diverse as Clearfield-based Futura, a mid-sized aluminum extractor, Utah furniture retailer R.C. Willey and municipalities like Sandy city.
Convenient and low-priced, the clinics keep workers healthy and productive, say proponents. They also profit employers by providing care at a fraction of the cost charged by traditional family practices, specialists and hospital emergency rooms.
It won't fix all that ails the nation's bloated health system. But even skeptics, who worry about substandard care and employers having access to medical information that prejudices them against workers, say it holds promise.
"There is no problem with making it easier and cheaper for workers to get care," said Salt Lake City accident and injury attorney Dawn Atkin. "The problem is when an in-house doctor is not sending things out for more expensive, advanced care in order to save the company money."
This happens with injury claims, but rarely, said Atkin, noting that only 2 percent of workplace injuries wind up in litigation.
—
story continues below
Setting up shop » At Futura, workplace safety wasn't the motive.
Tired of watching her company's health insurance premiums rise and benefits deteriorate, CEO Sue Johnson moved her 260-plus employees to high-deductible health plans about six or seven years ago.
The plans led employees to spend their health care dollars more wisely, but made some reluctant to seek care. And the sticker price for everything, from X-rays and throat cultures to prescription drugs, remained the same.
Johnson sees the health industry through the lens of someone steeped in "value chain" manufacturing principles.
"In health care, the value chain is full of waste," she said, citing the armies of bill collectors that hospitals hire to boost revenue and claims handlers that insurers hire for a process that can delay and defer payment.
"How much of that helps patients?" asked Johnson.
Futura was already self-insured. The natural next step was to bring doctoring in-house.
Next Page >