Onsite Primary Care for Manufacturing Employees

When people think of ‘traditional’ primary care, they tend to think of scheduling an appointment months in advance, taking hours off work to get to the facility, and spending more time in the waiting room than they do speaking to their provider. Most people would agree this is not an ideal experience, especially when it comes to something as important as your health. This is especially true in the manufacturing industry, where employees are required to be in consistently good health to prevent workplace injury and keep themselves and others safe on the job.

A better solution is onsite primary care, and many manufacturing employers are starting to introduce primary care solutions to solve for the disappointing primary care experience their people are having in the community. According to the National Association of Worksite Health Centers, 31% of large employers with 5,000 or more employees offer a primary care clinic. But what does onsite primary care actually look like in practice for the manufacturing industry?

Onsite Primary Care for the Manufacturing Industry

Onsite primary care revolves around a wellness center located right at your workplace. Staffed with licensed providers who understand your workforce’s needs, this allows your employees and dependents to take care of their health on a regular basis and be back on the job quickly. Onsite clinics can fulfill all typical primary care needs, from regular physicals to chronic condition management and sick care. Offering this benefit is crucial in manufacturing, simply because a healthier worksite is a safer worksite.

Primary care services like physicals and sick care are just the beginning of what your onsite wellness center can do. An integrated model of care, advanced primary care, does even more to drive lower healthcare costs, better experiences, and better health for your manufacturing employees and their families. Built on the foundation of the patient-centered medical home, complementary services like care management, behavioral health, care navigation, and pharmacy can take your onsite primary care center to the next level.

The Benefits of Onsite Primary Care for Manufacturing Employees

Seeing a primary care provider shouldn’t mean missing half of a shift. One of the core benefits of offering an onsite clinic is convenience; seeing a provider can be as simple as walking down the hallway from the manufacturing floor for a quick appointment.

Onsite providers get to know employees by name, what the demands of their job are, and their individual healthcare needs. As a result, they build positive relationships and can provide much more personalized care. That continues through a deep understanding of your organization’s benefits, which means providers can help your employees utilize their benefits to the fullest.

All these factors contribute to a higher quality primary care experience than what’s typically found in the community, so your workforce actively looks forward to their primary care visits instead of avoiding them:

The Benefits of Onsite Primary Care for Manufacturing Organizations

When your employee’s physical safety within the workplace is top priority, you want to ensure they’re staying as healthy as possible on and off the job. According to the National Safety Council, 100,000+ manufacturing workers suffer a job-related injury each year. While many of these accidents are equipment related, numerous stem from the health-related issues of the operators themselves.

Preventive primary care can mitigate some of these hazards, whether it’s an employee who has delayed a primary care visit regarding a health concern, or someone who begins to fall ill but can’t afford to miss work. With the right preventive treatment at an onsite wellness center, many health-related accidents can be prevented before they happen.

A higher use of primary care services, along with an associated reduction in workplace injuries, results in lower overall healthcare spend for the organization. At Premise Health, we’ve shown through a claims-based analysis that employers save an average of 25%, or $2,014 on total cost of care for employees and dependents attributed to an onsite or nearsite wellness center. We also found that routine office visits increased by 39% while emergency room visits went down by 27%. Investing in your workforce’s long-term wellbeing serves as a great recruitment and retention tool and demonstrates a commitment to employee health and wellness.

Primary Care That Works as Hard as Your People

Partnering with Premise Health to offer primary care through an onsite wellness center is an effective way to mitigate workplace accidents and generate measurable savings on total cost of care, while also attracting talent and retaining employees. With our experience delivering care to manufacturing organizations in a wide range of industries, we have the knowledge and infrastructure to create a winning solution for you and your people. Providing this benefit to your people is much more than convenience, but rather an opportunity to help them get, stay, and be well.

Learn more about primary care at Premise Health or contact us today.