Docs court employers with health management service

Three years ago, the physician practice American Health Network was concerned that the boom in employer on-site clinics would hurt its business. So it launched a program aimed at managing the health of employers’ workers. And it has come up with some impressive results.

Carmel-based American Health’s Employer Health Management program sends nurses to all of an employer’s locations once a month to meet with employees and their spouses. Every employee and spouse who participates is assigned to a specific nurse coach, who checks blood sugar, blood pressure and body mass index, and chats about each person’s health issues.

“The real impact comes from the personal relationship with the nurse,” said Mary Delaney, director of the employee health program at American Health. “That is what is missing in health care.”

She noted, for instance, that efforts to help an employee stop smoking are likely to be futile unless they also address the stressors in a person’s life, which lead him or her to smoke. And that can only be done via a relationship that develops in recurring conversations.

Or, she noted, diabetics with depression spend, on average, twice as much on health care as diabetics without depression. So American Health’s nurses try to identify mental health issues that may be complicating a patient’s chronic diseases.

American Health now serves 13 employers with roughly 8,000 people on their health plans. They include Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana, Pearson Ford Inc., Indiana Sports Corp., First Merchants Corp., Howard County government and the public schools of Wabash.

The biggest financial impact came at Goodwill, the first large employer to sign up with American Health. Goodwill encouraged its employees to participate in the health coaching, giving them 20 minutes paid time off to meet with a nurse once a month at their workplace.

Also, Goodwill charged employees no co-pay to go see an American Health physician, making it easier for employees to get further medical care when a nurse recommended it.

A UnitedHealthcare analysis found that Goodwill’s total medical and pharmacy claims dropped nearly 27 percent from what they were projected to be in the first 12 months of American Health’s program.

That meant Goodwill spent $100 less every month for all 1,200 people covered by its health plan.

“We can make some huge inroads,” said Dr. Ben Park, CEO of American Health. He said the program, which is staffed by 22 American Health employees, has yet to turn a profit—although it is on course to break even this year.

For the employee health program, American Health charges employers $15 to $25 per month for each member of its health plan.

Park said the program is helping American Health adapt to a trend in all of health care, in which nurses are handling more coaching and routine patient care. Physicians, meanwhile, are shifting to focus on fewer, but more complex, patients.

Also, American health’s strategy is another way in which health care providers are trying to work directly with employers—rather than exclusively through health insurers to attract patients and care for them.

For example, Indiana-based operators of on-site clinics have opened more than 80 clinics around Indiana and in nearby states.

Employers have even started banding together in small groups to open clinics that serve all their employees. That has made the clinic concept possible, even for smaller employers.

American Health has also started to run some clinics, if employers request it in addition to the nurse coaching program.

“It has allowed us to have a conversation with employers that we were not having before,” Park said.•