Alexandra Vazquez works within the Phifer manufacturing facility, a window display producer outdoors Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
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TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Like most medical workplaces, the small suite of examination rooms on the PhiferCares Clinic fills every day with sufferers looking for assist with bumps and bruises, sore throats, and stuffy noses.
However there’s an necessary distinction about this clinic in central Alabama: Nobody will get a invoice, together with for prescriptions.
That’s as a result of the clinic is owned by a producing firm with a particular agenda. “We don’t need you to spend cash on well being care,” mentioned Russell DuBose, vice chairman of human sources at Phifer.
Phifer, a worldwide producer of window screens, opened the clinic 5 years in the past in a bid to regulate its well being care prices and cease huge medical payments from driving its employees into debt. The technique has paid huge dividends. Phifer has saved a lot on well being care that the corporate was in a position to open a free summer season camp for the youngsters of workers.
Brooke Williams works on the pharmacy counter on the PhiferCares Clinic outdoors Tuscaloosa, Alabama. For gratis, Phifer workers and their households can go to and get fundamental major care, together with pharmaceuticals.
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Employees have dramatically boosted retirement financial savings, too. And Phifer is now including chiropractic care and orthotics, all for free of charge to employees.
Advantages like these stay out of attain for many U.S. employees, hundreds of thousands of whom drain financial savings, take out second mortgages, or reduce on meals and different necessities to remain forward of well being care debt. Total, about 100 million folks within the U.S. are burdened by some type of this debt, based on an investigation by KFF Well being Information and NPR.
Lots of these folks have well being plans by way of employers who, unable to regulate their well being care prices, now drive employees to pay hundreds of {dollars} out-of-pocket after they go to a health care provider. Phifer has proven there’s one other approach. The corporate not solely saved itself cash, it’s sharing the advantages with employees and shielding them from debt.
“It’s actually outstanding,” mentioned Shawn Gremminger, president of the Nationwide Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions, which works with employers on enhancing well being advantages.
“If I needed to level to a single employer in our community that’s been essentially the most aggressive tackling this downside and developing with essentially the most modern options,” he mentioned, “it is a comparatively small, privately owned producer in a small city within the South.”
‘Unacceptable’ well being prices
Phifer is a family-owned firm based after World Warfare II by a former pilot.
J. Reese Phifer noticed a chance to show aluminum produced for the warfare effort into window screens for America’s booming suburbs.
The outside of the Phifer workplaces and manufacturing facility outdoors Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Phifer, a family-owned firm based within the Fifties, manufactures window screens and different merchandise in its cavernous plant.
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At this time Phifer nonetheless makes screens at a cavernous plant outdoors Tuscaloosa that stretches over greater than 34 acres of manufacturing facility flooring. Inside, large rolls of aluminum coil are unwound, stretched, and spun on rows of spools and looms. Elsewhere, fiberglass is woven into materials for window shades, patio furnishings, and different merchandise.
Russell DuBose, vice chairman of human sources at Phifer, says, “We don’t need you to spend cash on well being care.”
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Enterprise has been good for the corporate, which employs about 2,000 folks and operates vegetation in Alabama and abroad. A couple of years in the past, although, Phifer seen its employees weren’t saving sufficient for retirement. The wrongdoer was medical payments.
“Copays, coinsurance, value sharing. All these items have been taking cash away from our plan members,” DuBose mentioned. “The amount of cash workers have been having to spend on well being care was unacceptable.”
That’s commonplace. Most U.S. employees and their households are in a well being plan with important value sharing, requiring they pay hundreds of {dollars} out-of-pocket earlier than protection kicks in.
The typical deductible for an employer-provided well being plan now exceeds $1,500, information exhibits. And for household plans, deductibles might be a number of occasions that. That’s an enormous cause well being care debt is such an enormous downside, even for folks with well being protection.
For Phifer, which depends on expert employees to function its machines, decreasing workers’ monetary stress turned a precedence, DuBose mentioned. “When you could have anyone who desires to be right here each day, desires to be right here yearly,” he mentioned, “they will do some fairly superior stuff.”
Eradicating limitations
Phifer landed on a deceptively easy concept: Make it simpler — and cheaper — for employees to see a health care provider and fill a prescription. That, the corporate reasoned, might enhance worker well being and management pricey issues.
The cornerstone of this plan was the PhiferCares Clinic and pharmacy.
The entrance entrance to the PhiferCares Clinic outdoors Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
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The corporate arrange the clinic in a small park and recreation house Phifer owned down the street from the manufacturing facility. It contracted with an area well being system to supply the doctor and nurses. Inside is a small pharmacy.
For gratis, workers and their households can go in for fundamental major care, together with checkups, vaccinations, and assist managing power diseases like diabetes. “It’s virtually a concierge service,” DuBose mentioned.
Phifer did one thing else, too. It directs sufferers to specialists and hospitals with the best high quality rankings. That may get monetary savings for sufferers and the corporate. Employees who select considered one of these suppliers usually don’t get a invoice.
That sort of no-cost entry makes an enormous distinction, mentioned Ronald Lewis, who visited the PhiferCares Clinic not too long ago for a checkup.
“I am saving hundreds of {dollars}, straightforward. Straightforward $3,000,” mentioned Lewis, whose spouse works on the plant. “All you’ve obtained to do is are available, make an appointment, and so they are available and see you. … It’s a life-changer.”
The clinic has helped Lewis shed some pounds and hold his blood strain in examine. A health care provider additionally caught early indicators of prostate most cancers.
Cherry Wilson, who has labored on a manufacturing line at Phifer since 2017, mentioned she nonetheless has medical debt from a gallbladder surgical procedure she had earlier than she joined the corporate. However when she broke her foot extra not too long ago and obtained surgical procedure from a most popular specialist, there have been no medical payments. “I don’t pay something right here,” she mentioned.
Large dividends
Different firms have experimented with office clinics with combined outcomes.
Working a medical workplace might be costly. The technique might not work if workers aren’t centrally situated or if worker turnover is excessive. And financial savings can take some time to materialize. However analysis on employer well being advantages has proven that decreasing how a lot employees pay for major care and pharmaceuticals yields higher outcomes for employees and might save everyone cash.
Phifer is reaping rewards.
Regardless of years of excessive inflation nationally, the corporate’s internet spending on well being care was decrease in 2023 than in 2019, declining from $15.8 million to $14.9 million in fixed {dollars}, based on information offered by DuBose.
The price of the corporate’s hottest well being plan — which comes with no deductible and contains dental advantages — is decrease, as nicely. Phifer employees pay $394 a month for this household plan. By comparability, employees nationally contribute $548 month-to-month on common for household protection that usually comes with a large deductible.
“We’ve seen the facility of prevention,” DuBose mentioned.
With financial savings from its well being care technique, Phifer opened the summer season camp final yr. And the corporate is providing faculty scholarships to employees’ kids.
Employees are saving extra, too. About 90% are hitting their retirement targets, DuBose mentioned, up from round 75% 5 years in the past.
The protections from huge medical payments have had one other profit, mentioned Jerry Wheat, who has labored for Phifer for 38 years and runs a manufacturing line for fiberglass screens.
Jerry Wheat, who has labored for Phifer for 38 years, says beneficiant well being advantages make folks need to work tougher for the corporate.
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“It makes you need to deal with your self and do higher for the corporate,” Wheat mentioned. “If anyone’s going to deal with you, don’t you need to deal with them? That’s the best way I take a look at it. However I’m old-school.”
KFF Well being Information is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points and is without doubt one of the core working applications at KFF.
