Last year Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana set up a state-run clinic in Helena for state workers and their families. No co-pays, no deductibles - free primary care. NPR Morning Edition has a report on how it has worked out.
The state contracts with a private company to run the facility and pays for everything — wages of the staff, total costs of all the visits. Those are all new expenses, and they all come from the budget for state employee healthcare.
Even so, division manager Russ Hill says it's actually costing the state $1,500,000 less for healthcare than before the clinic opened.
"Because there's no markup, our cost per visit is lower than in a private fee-for-service environment," Hill says.
Physicians are paid by the hour, not by the number of procedures they prescribe like many in the private sector. The state is able to buy supplies at lower prices.
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And that's not the only way it saves - people are coming in who might not see a doctor otherwise.
Hill says the facility is catching a lot, including 600 people who have diabetes, 1,300 people with high cholesterol, 1,600 people with high blood pressure and 2,600 patients diagnosed as obese. Treating these conditions early could avoid heart attacks, amputations, or other expensive hospital visits down the line, saving the state more money.
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What a concept - give people easy access to health care, try something besides the fee for service model, give people preventive care while conditions are easier to treat, and you end up with healthier people AND you save money too! They've opened a second clinic and more are being planned. Check out the entire NPR story at the link.
While the NPR story doesn't have any links to the clinic or the company running it, a web search does turn up some results. This looks like the webpage for the clinic, and here's a PDF version of the clinic brochure. The company running the clinic is CareHere - and this is an "About" page from their website.