Workplace Health Care Is a Growing Trend

Employers seek to offset rising costs and improve employee health

Published: Monday, February 6, 2012 - 13:51

In an era of soaring medical costs, providing health care to employees at or near their workplace is gaining new momentum, according to an article in the Winter 2012 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.

A 2011 study by the professional-services company Towers Watson and the nonprofit National Business Group on Health found that 23 percent of the midsized and large U.S. employers they surveyed had on-site health clinics and that another 12 percent planned to establish an on-site clinic in 2012.

Companies ranging in size from Fortune’s “Best Company to Work For” winner, SAS Institute, to privately held Rosen Hotels & Resorts report that on-site employee health care saves millions in health care spending while improving employee health and satisfaction.

Motivated by rising costs and commitment to their staff’s health and productivity, many companies are taking matters into their own hands, according to the article. In this so-called “do-it-yourself” health care, some firms operate clinics with their own employees, including doctors and nurses, while others contract with outside organizations for clinical management and staff.

The entire article, “Do-It-Yourself Employee Health Care,” is available on the MIT Sloan Management Review website. The article was written by:
Ann M. Mirabito, Ph.D., assistant professor of marketing at the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Her research focuses on health care, where she has explored ways stakeholders can act to improve outcomes and value. Her work has appeared in Harvard Business Review and medical journals including Annals of Internal Medicine and Mayo Clinic Proceedings. She has extensive executive responsibility in large (e.g., Frito-Lay, Time Warner) and small organizations, which include consumer, business-to-business, nonprofit, and government (Federal Reserve Board).
Leonard L. Berry, Ph.D., is a distinguished professor of marketing and M.B. Zale Chair in Retailing and Marketing Leadership in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. He is also professor of humanities in medicine in the College of Medicine at The Texas A&M University System Health Science Center. He has served as a visiting scientist at Mayo Clinic, studying health care service, and is a former national president of the American Marketing Association. Berry co-authored with Ken Seltman the book, Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic (McGraw-Hill, 2008).
Gale Adcock, R.N., is the director of corporate health services at SAS Institute Inc., in Cary, North Carolina. She also serves as a consulting associate faculty member for Duke University and is an adjunct associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her diploma in nursing from Virginia Baptist Hospital, her bachelor of science in nursing from East Carolina University, and her master of science in nursing and family nurse practitioner certificate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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