Alexandra Vazquez works within the Phifer manufacturing facility, a window display producer exterior Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
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TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Like most medical places of work, the small suite of examination rooms on the PhiferCares Clinic fills each day with sufferers searching for assist with bumps and bruises, sore throats, and stuffy noses.
However there’s an essential 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 selected agenda. “We don’t need you to spend cash on well being care,” mentioned Russell DuBose, vp of human assets at Phifer.
Phifer, a world 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 capable of open a free summer season camp for the youngsters of workers.
Brooke Williams works on the pharmacy counter on the PhiferCares Clinic exterior Tuscaloosa, Alabama. For gratis, Phifer workers and their households can go to and get primary main care, together with pharmaceuticals.
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Staff have dramatically boosted retirement financial savings, too. And Phifer is now including chiropractic care and orthotics, all for gratis to employees.
Advantages like these stay out of attain for many U.S. employees, thousands and 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. General, about 100 million individuals within the U.S. are burdened by some type of this debt, in accordance with an investigation by KFF Well being Information and NPR.
Lots of these individuals have well being plans via employers who, unable to regulate their well being care prices, now power employees to pay hundreds of {dollars} out-of-pocket once 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 bettering well being advantages.
“If I needed to level to a single employer in our community that’s been essentially the most aggressive tackling this drawback and developing with essentially the most progressive 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 Battle II by a former pilot.
J. Reese Phifer noticed a possibility to show aluminum produced for the conflict effort into window screens for America’s booming suburbs.
The outside of the Phifer places of work and manufacturing facility exterior Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Phifer, a family-owned firm based within the Nineteen 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 exterior Tuscaloosa that stretches over greater than 34 acres of manufacturing facility flooring. Inside, huge 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, vp of human assets 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 individuals 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 offender was medical payments.
“Copays, coinsurance, price sharing. All this stuff have been taking cash away from our plan members,” DuBose mentioned. “The sum of money 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 vital price sharing, requiring they pay hundreds of {dollars} out-of-pocket earlier than protection kicks in.
The common deductible for an employer-provided well being plan now exceeds $1,500, knowledge reveals. And for household plans, deductibles could be a number of instances that. That’s an enormous cause well being care debt is such an enormous drawback, even for individuals with well being protection.
For Phifer, which depends on expert employees to function its machines, lowering workers’ monetary stress grew to become a precedence, DuBose mentioned. “When you’ve gotten anyone who desires to be right here on daily basis, desires to be right here yearly,” he mentioned, “they’ll do some fairly superior stuff.”
Eradicating obstacles
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, may 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 exterior 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 offer the doctor and nurses. Inside is a small pharmacy.
For gratis, workers and their households can go in for primary main care, together with checkups, vaccinations, and assist managing continual sicknesses like diabetes. “It’s nearly a concierge service,” DuBose mentioned.
Phifer did one thing else, too. It directs sufferers to specialists and hospitals with the best high quality scores. That may lower your expenses for sufferers and the corporate. Staff who select one among these suppliers sometimes 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}, simple. Straightforward $3,000,” mentioned Lewis, whose spouse works on the plant. “All you’ve received to do is are available, make an appointment, they usually are available and see you. … It’s a life-changer.”
The clinic has helped Lewis shed some pounds and maintain his blood stress in verify. 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 received surgical procedure from a most popular specialist, there have been no medical payments. “I don’t pay something right here,” she mentioned.
Huge dividends
Different corporations have experimented with office clinics with blended outcomes.
Operating a medical workplace could be costly. The technique could not work if workers aren’t centrally positioned 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 lowering how a lot employees pay for main 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 web spending on well being care was decrease in 2023 than in 2019, declining from $15.8 million to $14.9 million in fixed {dollars}, in accordance with knowledge offered by DuBose.
The price of the corporate’s hottest well being plan — which comes with no deductible and consists of 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 sometimes 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 12 months. And the corporate is providing school scholarships to employees’ kids.
Staff are saving extra, too. About 90% are hitting their retirement objectives, 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 individuals wish to work tougher for the corporate.
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“It makes you wish to maintain your self and do higher for the corporate,” Wheat mentioned. “If anyone’s going to maintain you, don’t you wish to maintain them? That’s the best way I have 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 packages at KFF.
