Why strategically utilizing data is vital to measuring the success of your onsite health clinic

Learn about the starring role data plays in the achievements of an employer-sponsored health center from Lauren Kirschner, Director of Client Services

Employer-sponsored health clinics have become a strategic initiative for organizations utilizing advanced primary care as a way to control their health care costs. 

To prove the value of their investment in near-site or onsite health centers, these organizations often look to the primary care clinic vendor for qualitative and quantitative measures of success.

Measuring the return on investment (ROI) and value on investment (VOI) of a health center can be extremely complex, so it’s essential that your organization partners with the right vendor that has the data to back up the satisfaction and success of their clients.

Why is measuring the value of a health center complex and why is it important?

Measuring the value of an employer-sponsored health center can be complicated by factors such as:

• Serving a broad employee population base with diverse health care needs and socioeconomic backgrounds
• Lack of access to past health plan claims
• Difficulty measuring cost avoidance (i.e. prevention of heart attack or cancers)
• Considering catastrophic events that occur, which can skew the numbers

Transparency is vital to the success of any partnership in the healthcare industry, and your onsite health center vendor should understand that. By measuring the value of your health center, you and your vendor can work together to develop a strategic plan to address areas of opportunity and growth. You can set and track the key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter most to your organization and hold your vendor accountable to report back those outcomes on a consistent basis.

How to measure the success of your onsite health center

As an employer, you likely launched your onsite health center to help with healthcare cost containment, and ROI is the critical factor you track to measure success.

However, to effectively evaluate the success of your onsite health center, your organization must measure the impact of the clinic on your organization as a whole instead of singularly focusing on ROI. That is why it is important for you to establish measurements on VOI, and assess the multiple ways your onsite health center impacts your organization’s bottom line and overall success.

The right strategic partner will be able to utilize data analytics to tell the complete story of the wins and opportunities of your onsite clinic through infographics, dashboards, reports, and more. 

What metrics should be used to measure the success of my health center?

There are a variety of values to assess when measuring the success of your onsite clinic. Some results are quantifiable in a short period of time, while others may take several years.

In its first year, your vendor should be able to measure the following for your organization:

• Primary care visits
• Lab service rates
• Prescription drug changes
  • Increase in generic utilization
  • Overall prescription reduction
  • Compliance rates

Values such as financial savings, productivity gains, and reduction in absenteeism rates may take two to three years to accurately measure.

Accurate evaluation of an onsite medical clinic’s ROI should include the following over a two to three year period:

• Focus on real healthcare cost savings vs. projected/average savings linked to employee claims data.
• Tracking of measurable KPIs such as:
  • Percentage of employee population utilizing the onsite clinic relating to the company health plan before clinic implementation vs. after clinic implementation.
  • Percentage improvements in preventive screenings, emergency room (ER)/hospital admission rates, chronic disease management in high-risk populations, and gaps in utilizing health care.
• A value to assess how accessible primary care for employees adds to the organization’s recruitment and retention rates 
• Savings associated with moving services from physician’s offices/outpatient settings to the onsite clinic
• Long-term cost savings correlated with health improvement in the employee population
• Reduced prescription costs
  • Reduction in overall prescription utilization
  • Increased generic substitutions
  • Preventive interventions
  • Compliance rates

Why and how WeCare tlc strategically utilizes healthcare data 

With an average of over $300 billion a year wasted in the U.S. healthcare system on avoidable costs such as failures in care delivery, coordination, and unnecessary treatment, WeCare tlc understands the importance of strategically utilizing health care data to make better healthcare decisions and ensure patient care is provided in an appropriate, timely, and cost-effective manner. [1] We have a duty to have transparent conversations with our clients and partners so that we can:

• Make informed decisions about the care delivered
• Understand opportunities for patient engagement and population health strategy, and
• Determine the savings and impact to our patients and clients’ health plans.

Through our exclusive partnership with data analytics firm TURBOARD, our team at WeCare tlc has the ability to deliver actionable insights from high-level data visualization capabilities that enable our clinical teams to validate and gain additional insight into specific patient outcomes when needed. Through infographics, dashboards, and reports, we use data to see where we are going, not just where we have been for the benefit of our clients.

To conclude

With health care costs as the second largest expense for most organizations after payroll, employers are looking for an effective solution to control medical spend. [2] Comprehensive, onsite health clinics in the workplace provide an effective solution to controlling health care costs and retaining a healthier workforce. However, in order to fully maximize the benefits of an onsite health center, organizations should find a partner who can deliver independent, consistent, accurate, and personalized primary care to the employee population, which will produce positive short-term and long-term ROI.

The right primary care partner for your workforce!

Delivered through our health centers both in-person and virtually, our advanced primary care services provide higher quality outcomes for patients, while making long-term financial sense for employers.

As a privately held, women-owned business, our clinical teams are able to utilize the most effective services to diagnose and treat your employees and their family members. We simply do what is best for our patients without any potential conflicts of interest. 

Ready to control medical spend and build a corporate culture based on wellness?
Contact us today to learn how we can support your organization in these goals 

Sources:

1: MassDevice | Study: Nearly $1 trillion wasted in U.S. healthcare annually

2: CFO | You Run a Health-Care Business Whether You Like It or Not