6 Questions to Ask Your Onsite Clinic Provider

Making the transition to an onsite clinic provider is a significant shift—but even then, discernment is essential in picking the right provider. To know that an onsite health clinic will be worth the cost, ask the provider the clarifying questions below.

1. Urgent care or primary care?

Although Proactive MD’s services can include urgent care, our scope is much broader. Whereas urgent care is strictly reactive, we live up to our name by emphasizing preventive healthcare. We provide our patients a healthcare home, offering chronic, acute, and wellness care, as well as health coaching, lab tests, care coordination, and minor procedures. We’re also fully equipped to address behavioral health and the social determinants of health.

Businesses and their employees deserve more than glorified urgent care centers. We don’t only want to see patients when they break an arm; as a primary care provider, our staff has a passion for serving as the center of patients’ healthcare neighborhood.

2. Who bears the risk of pass-through costs?

Proactive MD offers a full-scope risk management solution by providing credible, fixed-fee pricing with limited pass-through costs—unlike many of our competitors.

Most traditional onsite clinics operate under a variable, pass-through model that puts most of the financial risk back on the employer. We assume the majority risk of variable pricing—including turnover and staff vacancies. That means the cost to operate the clinic is exactly what we say it will be on the day the contract is signed—no surprises.

3. How does your model improve healthcare outcomes and save employers money?

Too many onsite clinics aren’t set up to actually reduce the total cost of employee healthcare. They use an outdated model that focuses too heavily on transactional healthcare services and high-cost specialty referrals rather than forming long-term, meaningful care relationships with their patients.

While forging deep and lasting relationships with employees, Proactive MD Patient Advocates also seek out other healthcare providers— specialists, industry experts, second opinion networks— collaborating efficiently to deliver the best care. Through these partnerships, we thoughtfully guide our patients through the entire continuum of care, address high-cost claimants, and improve health outcomes while saving employers money.

4. How do you calculate ROI?

A conveniently located clinic may reduce employees’ urgent care visits, but it’s not enough to address the costs associated with managing complex and chronic conditions. Proactive MD knows that significant return on investment only comes from active patient engagement and appropriate care plans—not one-time healthcare transactions.

Traditional onsite clinics seek to prove their value by touting clinic volume, fees saved, and soft benefits like productivity gains—which is not even half the story. Proactive MD’s innovative ROI guarantee measures initial investment against both short and long-term savings, emphasizing the total cost of care.

5. How well do you engage with my employees?

Many onsite healthcare clinics put the responsibility for patient engagement on the human resources department—which is often too time-strapped to actively promote health and wellness offerings to employees.

Proactive MD believes this defeats the purpose of an onsite clinic. The clinic is not meant to be an onsite urgent care center that employees only hear about when they have the flu. Instead, we promote health and wellness among employees and their families by building relationships.

Proactive MD Patient Advocates don’t sit back and wait for employees to show up. Instead, they carefully quantify patient needs, strategically engage patients based on our proprietary risk stratification model, and encourage specific, individual interactions with our clinical team.

6. What is your performance guarantee?

While many onsite clinic vendors boast that they are willing to put their annual management fees at risk as a guarantee of performance satisfaction, when you actually dig into the numbers, it doesn’t add up to much. 100% of a clinic’s annual management fees could translate into just 3% of their total cost at risk. It’s something, but not much.

Proactive MD operates in a fully transparent way, putting up to 20% of our total fees at risk. We welcome the opportunity to connect with patients beyond the Health Center walls and manage each patient’s overall healthcare experience.

That means greater patient engagement, improved health outcomes, higher levels of customer service, and a greater ROI.

You probably have more questions—hopefully for us at Proactive MD. Contact us to learn more about an onsite healthcare model that works.