By Karin Shaw Anderson, The Dallas Morning News
Jun. 14–Reina Iglesias knows the clinic staff well.
The 36-year-old mother of four says someone in her family falls ill about once a month.
Friday it was 4-year-old Josue Iglesias, who woke up with a fever and an ear infection.
For Ms. Iglesias, a trip to the doctor could nip about $50 from her paycheck for co-payments and prescriptions.
But the school custodian doesn’t fret over the cost of frequent doctor visits. Josue’s appointment was free, and the prescription antibiotic cost her only a few dollars at the Mesquite Employee Health Center.
“It’s been very convenient for me,” Ms. Iglesias said through a translator.
Lanny Frasier, the Mesquite school district’s assistant superintendent for personnel services, says the 16-month-old employee clinic — which the school district shares with the city — has been a good deal for everyone. School officials anticipate seeing about $1 million a year in savings for health benefit offerings.
“We think it’s one of the best things we’ve done,” Mr. Frasier said.
As health-care costs rise, running in-house health clinics appears to be penciling out for cities and school districts.
Several school districts in the Rio Grande Valley have opened similar clinics to trim the cost of employee health claims. The Pharr-San Juan-Alamo school district has averaged more than $300,000 a year in savings since it opened its health clinic three years ago. The city of Garland opened its own health clinic in 2003 with an average annual savings of about $500,000. Now Frisco school officials are exploring the idea.
Savings first appear when staff members and their families choose to visit an employee clinic — where the city or school district’s costs are fixed — instead of their regular physician’s office, where billing rates are typically higher.
Mr. Frasier said there are also long-term savings that can’t be quantified.
The employee doesn’t pay a deductible or co-payment to visit a district-operated clinic, so employees are more likely to go to the doctor sooner.
“They’ve been able to catch some major things early and get them on treatment,” he said. “Those kinds of savings will be on the back end somewhere.”
For years, it seemed only large corporations could afford to operate employee health clinics.
“It has not been our experience that we’ve seen these in groups of less than 5,000 employees before,” said Ted Troy, the Frisco school district’s insurance consultant. “But now we’re seeing them down to 2,500 employees, and it begins to be something that we ought to consider.”
Now, larger corporations are finding new ways to bring down health-care costs.
Two years ago, Plano-based retailer JC Penney Co. struggled with high medical claims and low enrollment in its health care plan. But the company has since seen a cost savings through a so-called Personal Nurse Program, where teams of nurses work to improve the health of JC Penney’s sickest employees. That 16 percent of the workforce was driving 85 percent of the costs, according an April 9 presentation before the Dallas and Fort Worth health care business leaders.
Clinics are popping up in downtown office buildings as a way for tenants to cut health-care costs for employees. A clinic at the bottom floor of the Irving office building at 222 W. Las Colinas Blvd. serves tenants’ employees and their dependents with convenient medical care and disease prevention services with less wait time than a traditional setting.
The format also has been expanded to the general public, as retailers such as Wal-Mart and CVS have invested millions to open nurse practitioner clinics inside stores.
However, groups such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Family Practitioners argue that the clinics fragment the health care system and may offer lower quality health care.
Frisco school officials said they wanted to hear from area doctors before making a decision on the proposed employee health clinic.
The financial risk for the district is minimal, Mr. Troy told several Frisco school board members at an employee benefits committee meeting last month.
“You can always shut the thing down if it doesn’t work, and you can always expand it if it does,” he said.
Jane Brown, a branch library manager in Mesquite, sees the shared city and school district clinic as a job perk.
Her primary care doctor is at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas, so she popped into the employee clinic Friday for a quick blood test.
“If I just have the sniffles or something and don’t want to make the trip to my doctor in Dallas, this is in the city and close,” Ms. Brown said. “With the price of gas, I don’t want to drive too far.”
Staff writer Jason Roberson contributed to this report.
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