One company's success in reducing healthcare costs

KFF Health News published a happy story about a manufacturing company reducing its healthcare costs. A major step was establishing its own clinic -- staffed by a local health system -- where basic primary care is provided for free for employees and their families. Another step that the company took was to reduce costs for patients who needed to visit specialists and hospitals if they agreed to visit providers who are highly rated in terms of quality.

The article notes that not all companies who have experimented with running their own clinics have seen positive financial results. One potential factor is whether a company's workforce is sufficiently centralized. Although not stated in the article, it also seems that the size of the workforce is important to attaining economies of scale. It is also possible that manufacturers of physical products would benefit more from an onsite clinic than a company of knowledge workers. The article notes that "savings can take a while to materialize," suggesting that the move is likely more palatable to companies who have enough to invest for years. It would have been interesting to know how much of the company's savings were attributable to the clinic, and how much of it might be attributable to other parts, such as steering patients towards higher quality specialists or having insurance plans without deductibles.