How Onsite Clinics Can Improve Employee Health in School Districts

School district employees face many barriers when it comes to healthcare access. While working long, inflexible hours, there’s often not adequate time to drive to an appointment and face a lengthy waiting room visit before finally getting seen by the doctor. This process becomes even more difficult for school staff who lack reliable transportation. In addition, accessing healthcare services can be cost-prohibitive. 

But delaying healthcare leads to worse, more expensive outcomes, which burden employees and the district. Through school district onsite clinics, districts can support employees in improving their health while achieving better, more cost-effective results. 

Provides Access

With an onsite clinic, educators can schedule same-day or next-day appointments right down the hall from their classroom and wait less than five minutes to be seen by a provider. And with a solution like Marathon Health, these clinics are available to employees for little to no cost. 

"Better access to care leads to better health,” says Sheri Rich, Director of Human Resources for Keller Independent School District. “By having a health center onsite, our employees can easily be seen before, after, or during school." 

Districts can customize services offered at their onsite primary care clinic to serve the needs of their population, which may include adding mental health support, onsite prescription dispensing, and virtual care. This flexibility ensures that the healthcare solution evolves alongside the changing needs of educational professionals.

For example, St. Johns County School District partnered with Marathon Health in 2016 and added behavioral health services in 2019. 

“We were seeing more of a need, and the ability in our area to access behavioral health services had been diminishing,” says Becky Cromwell, Senior Account Manager with the Bailey Group and Benefits Consultant to the school district. “It seemed like a natural progression for the district to be able to offer that benefit to the employees.”

Improves School District Employee Health

Marathon Health centers operate on a value-based model. This allows providers to spend more time with patients providing health coaching. This turns the transactional once-a-year visit in the traditional healthcare landscape into a meaningful relationship with visits throughout the year.

Because the model isn’t built on churning through as many visits as possible, Marathon providers have long appointment windows with patients, allowing for in-depth conversations that give the time and space needed for a trusted relationship to build as well as concerns be addressed. More face-time and a deeper relationship helps drive better health — for everything from a runny nose to multiple chronic conditions. The results?

• 95% patient satisfaction rate
• 67% of patients improving biometric measures

“Once an employee meets our physicians, they become engaged and keep going back,” Rich says. “There’s a high quality of care.” 

Lowers Costs

With healthier, happier employees, districts benefit from higher retention and lower absenteeism and presenteeism. Employees see a 17% reduction in out-of-pocket healthcare expenses.

“For employees on two of our PPO plans, everything at the wellness center is free,” Rich says of Keller ISD. “If they're on the high-deductible plan, they incur a $10 copay for acute care visits, but everything else is free. If they saw a primary care physician outside of Marathon Health, it would run them $150 to $200.”

Employers utilizing Marathon Health save, on average, $1,800 per engaged member per year. Lower healthcare costs for school districts allows them to reserve budgets for teacher salaries and supplementary benefits, improving employee satisfaction. 

Partner with Marathon Health

Marathon Health partners with 60+ school districts and universities to offer valuable healthcare services to more than 200,000 teachers and staff. When you work with Marathon Health, you receive a fully customizable solution tailored to your specific workforce needs. Start saving on day one and decrease your total cost of care by as much as 31% by year five. 

The future of educational workforce management is here. It's accessible, comprehensive and centered on the holistic wellbeing of those who dedicate their lives to educating the next generation.

“When the contract with the [district’s] original provider came up for bid, the focus really shifted from just providing a regular primary care physician to wanting to focus on the whole person and prevention, as well as maintenance,” Cromwell says of St Johns choice to engage with Marathon Health. “So, the thought behind Marathon and their whole philosophy for taking care of a person really aligned with what the district was looking for.”