Health Care

The doctor is in

As a self-insured company, InfoCision Management Corp. realized that employees’ emergency room visits were really hitting the company in the pocketbook.

So, with the goal of reducing the number of hospital visits — along with the associated costs — the Akron teleservices company hired an on-site physician.

Kim Murphy, InfoCision’s vice president of employee benefits, says that hiring Dr. James Eley at the beginning of the year has reduced the number of claims made by InfoCision employees.

“It was just educating people to call the nurse hot line,” she says. “It was educating, if you can wait until the morning, do that, or go to an urgent care. If we can keep them out of the ER, that is going to save us a lot of money. I’m not trying to discourage them from getting medical help because I would really rather them get help quicker.”

Employees can reach Eley 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“We had an employee, and it was Sunday morning about 9:30,” she says. “They knew their daughter had been exposed to strep throat from someone at the day care center, and the daughter woke up ill. They told the doctor that, and he was able to call in a prescription for them, and Monday, she was fine and went back to school. They didn’t miss work, and she didn’t miss any school.”

Before implementing the program, Murphy spent a couple of years researching both the pros and cons of having an on-site physician. Then she asked the company’s health carrier for the names of the 20 doctors employees were seeing most and reached out to them. But to get a response, she knew she had to be creative to get past the doctors’ office managers.

“I knew if I sent them a flier, it’s probably not going to get their attention,” she says.

So she, with the help of her creative services team, designed a package to get the doctors’ attention.

“It was a really nice, wrapped green box with gold ribbon, which is our company colors,” she says. “Inside, we had a small cake with our logo on the top, and there was a recruiting message on the tag. We hand-delivered all the cakes to the doctors.”

After enticing the doctors to call her, Murphy said it was difficult to find the right match. She wasn’t interested in where the doctors received their degrees or how many degrees they had because if the employees weren’t comfortable with the doctor, then they weren’t going to see that person.

“I really wanted to take them back to when they first started to practice medicine and to really be concerned about people’s wellness, get to know them and their family history, and not be so productivity-driven,” she says.

Murphy says InfoCision pays the doctor whether employees use him or not.

“There have been days where he hasn’t seen anybody, and that’s fine, but I want him to be there for the employees,” she says.

Eley has been on-site at the company since the beginning of the year. Murphy says it will take a year to a year and a half to see the real impact of the practice, but so far, it has been a great benefit from an employee-convenience standpoint.

“In terms of productivity, they love it because they are able to walk in, see the doctor and get back to work,” she says. “He has tons of samples that he hands out, so he has enough to get them comfortable.”

HOW TO REACH: InfoCision Management Corp., (330) 670-5190, (330) 668-1400 or www.infocision.com

Medical benefits

While on-site health services were popular years ago in the manufacturing industry, some offices are now bringing the service back — and for good reason.

In 2006, HR Magazine reported on a study published in the December 2005 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, which said employers could see a return of $3 to $6 for each dollar spent over two to five years on workplace health strategies. That includes medical screenings, financial benefits for participation in health programs, health education classes, healthier food in the cafeteria and on-site clinics.

Kim Murphy, vice president of employee benefits at InfoCision Management Corp., says the number of visits to outside doctors by InfoCision employees has gone down after the company added an on-site physician in early 2007.

For May, the doctor saw an average of two people a day, but the number of visits is expected to vary depending on the season.

The doctor, Dr. James Eley, has hours at InfoCision’s headquarters from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday and 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Wednesdays, along with his own practice. He also has hours at three other InfoCision locations, and Murphy says she hopes to expand hours in other offices.

And while Murphy says she recommends that employees make appointments, walk-ins are also accepted.

“I always hear people saying, ‘I love my doctor, but I can’t get in until a week or two weeks from now,’ and they have to wait in the waiting room for an hour,” she says. “We don’t have that here.”