Medcor provides 24/7 health services
agents can offer clients
By Dennis H. Pillsbury
Medcor Medical Director Dr. Thomas Glimp.
"This is the real deal," says Ron Lensing, executive vice president of Ramsey, Krug, Farrell & Lensing (RKF&L), an agency based in Little Rock, Arkansas. "It's a good resource for agents who want to offer value-added service to their workers comp clients."
Ron is talking about Medcor, Inc., an occupational health management company based in the Chicago suburb of McHenry, Illinois. Medcor provides both on-site health care services for larger clients and off-site 24-hour telephonic triage services for smaller employers.
"For large work sites, say with hundreds of employees in one place, we put a health care professional on site with medical equipment, software systems and other support services," says Curtis Smith, vice president, Medcor. "This is an out-source clinic, dedicated to the work site. With 20 years' experience and over one million patients treated, we know what types of injuries can be handled on site and which need to be referred off site. We use our experience to train our nurses to use their skills in the occupational setting, so they also know what works and what doesn't work on site. The client benefits from better medical care, faster response, and a staff that is dedicated to their site and familiar with their specific needs and policies.
"We also make certain that the health care professional we send to be on site fits with the culture of the company." Curt notes that the "nurse who heads our clinic at Warner Bros. studios in Hollywood is comfortable dealing with complex budgets and production schedules, in addition to the medical care she delivers. The person who heads up the clinic at the Stillwater Mine in rural Montana is a different nurse altogether. He is comfortable working several thousand feet underground and relating with the mine workers, in addition to the medical care he delivers."
Dr. Glimp reviews a case with Diane Kinch, RN.
The key point is that an average of 75% of the injuries are treated on site wherever Medcor has an in-house clinic. "That means that three-quarters of the potential claims disappear," Curt says. "The most serious and costly of the claims still occur," he admits, "but we're very good at early recognition of what is serious and can help control the costs through better medical management. The system of on-site clinics is amazingly efficient and far more in tune with the intended results."
Curt goes on to explain the economic model. "A traditional free-standing clinic that bills on a fee-for-service basis just does not align well with an employer's desire to minimize visits and get employees back to work. The clinic needs activity to generate revenue. Even when their intentions are good, they're always fighting with the economics. We looked at that model and worked on changing it. We don't do any fee-for-service billing. We work on a fixed annual fee, so our incentives are in alignment with the company that hired us. All of our resources are directed toward medicine, reducing costs and returning employees to the workplace."
Curt cites an example of cost cutting where a new client asked Medcor to take over elaborate testing for all new employees, including a urinalysis. "We asked the client if they had ever not hired someone or modified an employee's job because of a urinalysis result. The answer was 'no,' because of rules precluding such action. Knowing this, we helped them change the testing so it better reflected the actual job requirements. We eliminated the urinalysis test, which saved a lot of labor and lab expense. The off-site clinic that had been performing the tests over the years had no incentive to help the employer design a better screening exam because they got to bill for all the tests."
He goes on to note that the Medcor system also helps integrate health care management whether injuries are work-related or not. "If an employee comes to our on-site clinic at work, we assess and treat injuries regardless of where they occur. We then provide appropriate information to the client and the TPA so efforts can be made to return the injured party to work, either at their current job or at alternate duty if the injury requires such an arrangement. The result is that we not only have an impact on workers comp costs, but also can help reduce short-term and long-term disability costs as well."
This system of providing on-site clinics has been the backbone of Medcor since its founding in 1984. And it is from this initial service that its second offering emerged--the off-site triage program.
"The injured employee can talk directly to a registered nurse who can make the assessment on how to handle the injury immediately."
--Ron Lensing, Executive Vice President, RKF&L, Little Rock, Arkansas
Curt recalls that after about 15 years of offering the on-site clinic solution, "Clients came back to us looking for help with smaller offices with fewer employees. We began work on a 24-hour telephonic triage center. We put the pieces together and modified the system until we were satisfied it would work. Today, that adjunct service is bigger than our on-site clinic offering. We have 5,000 online customers and 150 on-site clinics.
"We collect an enormous amount of valuable information on workplace injury and treatment," Curt notes. "For example, many major retailers and grocery chains such as Target, Kohl's, Robinson May, and Supervalu use our on-site service in their distribution centers, and our triage service in their stores. Part of what we do for them is to report to corporate in real-time details about who is getting hurt and where, across their entire organization. The sample size is huge and includes not just claims but all injury incidents. This has allowed our clients to be more proactive in their prevention and claims management efforts. Our proprietary software, which is fully compliant with HIPAA and integrates with Microsoft Outlook, also allows us to report every incident within the same hour the incident occurs.
"All the data that we collect at every site is available to our clients in a format that mimics their organizational structure--organized by teams, departments, regions, whatever they use corporately," Curt explains. "Clients are not in the business of building medical software, so we've done it for them.
"In reality, that data may be more valuable than anything else we offer over the long run," he maintains. "It allows for building long-term trend analyses, preventive programs, and regulatory compliance. We keep OSHA records, fit testing results, hearing tests, drug testing results--anything the client needs."
Medcor's online triage service is what RKF&L offers its clients. "It offers us access to a resource that can help us help our clients avoid or minimize a claim," Ron Lensing notes. "The injured employee can talk directly to a registered nurse who can make the assessment on how to handle the injury immediately. That's very important in workers comp. The faster you deal with an injured employee and the more attention you give that individual, the happier that person is. It helps clients avoid having a disgruntled employee, and that's good for everyone because it helps to keep claim costs down and employees at work."
Ron continues: "We handle the risk transfer needs for a huge number of employees in self-insured programs. Larry Jolley, our vice president of risk management, serves as the administrator for the TPA we set up to manage self-insured groups. The TPA is the biggest user of Medcor's services, but we also use it for our commercial insurance clients. Many of the companies in the self-insured groups are perfect candidates for the Medcor service since they have a number of locations and shifts. Injuries may not occur near a doctor's office or when one is open, but the telephonic triage is always open.
"Naturally, we wanted to make certain that we were offering the best service for our clients and went to Medcor's home office before we signed up with them. They're a first-class organization."
And that "medical service" is available 24 hours a day, yet another advantage of the Medcor system. As Curt explains, "You might have an injury at a fast food restaurant at night when most doctors' offices are closed. Fast food restaurants typically employ many young kids. If the restaurant is part of the Medcor system, the manager calls the emergency number and speaks to a nurse who accesses client information on the computer, including where the nearest medical clinic is, if it is needed. The nurse will walk through an assessment with the injured employee and the manager. About 15% of the time, the injured person can go back to work immediately. In another 15% of the cases, first aid may be needed before the person can go back to work." In other cases, the best course of action may be for the employee to go home for the rest of the shift, perhaps because the injured employee can't work around food because of the injury.
Curt continues by noting that a "number of proactive insurance brokers have started to buy the service for their clients as a value-added service. It helps them differentiate themselves."
Medcor's client base includes companies ranging in size from 25 to 10,000 employees. They have clinics in such diverse places as the San Diego Zoo, Yellowstone National Park, and even the Mt. Everest base camp. The company also provided the on-site medical care at the World Trade Center site after 9/11. The Federal Emergency Management Agency handed off to Medcor three weeks after the terrorist attack.
"The workplace is where Medcor works," Curt concludes. "We are extremely specialized, but we like to think that we are very good at what we do. We describe Medcor as being a yard wide but a mile deep." *
For more information:
Medcor, Inc.
Web site: http://www.medcor.com/