What is Onsite Healthcare?

To reverse the tide of spiraling health plan costs and unhealthy populations, employers increasingly take a new approach and implement onsite healthcare solutions.

Today, roughly one-third of all organizations with at least 5,000 employees provide onsite healthcare, and the number grows even higher for larger organizations.  

What Does Onsite Healthcare Entail?

Onsite health centers operate on the concept that if employers remove barriers and make it easy and affordable to access high-quality care, employees and their families will engage with the services and become healthier, therefore lowering costs along the way.

For employers, it means bringing care directly to their people via a dedicated health center located on or near the worksite. While early onsite models took a transactional approach and focused primarily on sick or injury care, onsite healthcare looks radically different today.

The modern worksite health center takes a comprehensive approach to treat the whole person, combining advanced primary care, chronic condition management, wellness coaching, behavioral and mental health support, physical therapy, and more.

Building an Onsite Healthcare Model

Unlike the traditional market that favors a one-size-fits-all approach to healthcare, a key differentiator of onsite healthcare is employers can customize services to best serve their employees’ unique needs.

For instance, a major municipality with frontline workers and public safety officers may invest more in behavioral and mental health services, while an employer with a large number of assembly-line workers might place more emphasis on offering physical therapy and chronic condition management.

To build an effective onsite healthcare model, care providers embed themselves in the employer’s culture to truly understand the population. It involves reviewing data from prior claims and treatment documentation, as well as offering Health Risk Assessments and biometric screenings to establish a baseline and identify at-risk individuals.

With these best practices in place, onsite health providers actively monitor the employee population, optimize service offerings based on real-time needs, and personalize outreach to ensure engagement with health center services.

Key Benefits of Onsite Healthcare

While an onsite healthcare solution offers measurable health improvements and significant savings for many employers, it can also boost employee satisfaction and retention. In fact, workers increasingly rate onsite healthcare as a top employee benefit.

Consider some of these key benefits of providing onsite healthcare for your employee population.

Convenient Access to Premium Care

The onsite care model removes the barriers employees typically face and often prevents them from seeking care, such as taking time off from work, driving to a health center, or waiting several weeks to find an open appointment.

Because the onsite vendor primarily serves the employer, care teams see fewer patients and spend significantly more time with each employee to understand their health needs. Employees can often schedule same and next-day appointments to ensure they receive care when they need it most.

Onsite health centers also enhance convenience by dispensing medications and lab draws, so employees leave the appointment with a prescription in hand and can skip a trip to the pharmacy or testing center.

Comprehensive Primary Care Treats the Whole Person

Leading onsite healthcare providers take a comprehensive approach to primary care, accomplished through integrated care teams of physicians, nurse practitioners, health coaches, diabetes educators, and behavioral health specialists who work as a team to treat all aspects of the employee’s health and wellbeing.

Electronic medical records document and connect each touchpoint of the patient experience, ensuring the entire care team sees a complete picture of the employee’s medical history, diagnostic results, and personalized care plan.

Positive Health Outcomes Drive Savings

In the traditional market, the average employer sees its health plan spend increase year after year, averaging around 5% in 2022.

Yet, employers who invest in onsite healthcare solutions often see a significant return on investment via personalized chronic condition management and high-risk outreach, a reduction in emergency department and urgent care visits, cost-effective referrals, and employees becoming healthier.

A 2021 study on worksite health centers found that almost 90% of employers saw a positive return on investment, and in many cases, employers save millions on their health plan spend. According to the same study, 86% of employers reported an ROI of 1.5:1 or higher, meaning they saved $1.50 or more for every $1 invested in the onsite healthcare center.

Looking for an onsite healthcare solution for your employees? Learn More