Dive Brief:
- NextCare Holdings, Inc. and Physician Care Direct said July 22 they have teamed up to help small- and medium-sized employers in the Dallas area manage the cost of providing employees with health insurance.
- Under the agreement, PrimaCare Medical Centers, which are owned and operated by NextCare, will expand into delivering primary-care services. Physician Care Direct’s Employer Health Ownership Plan will let Dallas-area employers buy primary care directly from PrimaCare Medical Centers, then add coverage for specialists and hospitalization. Services offered by PrimaCare's 13 urgent care clinics in the Dallas area will be expanded into a primary care network based on the medical home model, the companies said.
- NextCare operates 106 urgent care facilities in 11 states.
Dive Insight:
Under this approach, the companies said that participating employers' workers will gain access to primary care services with no copays or coinsurance for included services. They said this approach eliminates the barriers to care typical with high deductible plans. By becoming self-insured under the Employer Health Ownership Plan, employers can convert 60% to 70% of their healthcare expenses to a variable cost, the companies said. "As a result, when healthcare spending is reduced, savings flow back to the employer not the insurance company. This can lower the cost of providing health benefits by as much as 30%," the companies said in a statement.
Amid pressure from employers to treat patients in less-costly outpatient care settings, urgent care centers are taking off across the U.S. Yet it seems to be a major shift to transform from urgent care's self-described mission as an after-hours doctor's office in the community to a comprehensive site of coordinated primary-care services. And it isn't clear whether employers' saving money upfront by cutting out managed care contracts—designed to manage care—will translate into better healthcare delivery that improves their employees' health outcomes and saves money from preventable problems down the road.