February 9, 2015 at 4:09 p.m.
One year in, school district seeing positive results from on-site clinic
One year in, school district seeing positive results from on-site clinic
The school board agreed to partner with Aspirus to open the clinic after learning that the district could negotiate a 6.36 percent decrease in the cost of its insurance plan for the 2013-14 school year. That decrease saved the district approximately $900,000. The administration proposed using $51,000 of that money to open the clinic. The board also authorized spending an additional $98,000 from those savings to remodel part of the high school to house the clinic. The clinic is open to all district employees and their dependents with WPS insurance. The clinic is not available to students or the general public.
The on-site clinic officially opened Jan. 8, 2014 with the goals of reducing insurance costs, providing long-term savings and reducing absenteeism. According the Superintendent Kelli Jacobi and Director of Business Services Marta Kwiatkowski, those goals are being met.
The district earned its lowest loss ratio ever in 2014. Kwiatkowski said a big reason for that achievement is the clinic.
"We are doing outstanding. We have never had such a low loss ratio before," Kwiatkowski said.
"I think that has to do with, No. 1, our employees are healthier, and, No. 2, they are using the clinic. The clinic does not get charged through the health insurance unless there are any labs."
A loss ratio of 95 percent is the break-even point for insurance companies, Kwiatkowski said. Anything above that figure means the insurance company is losing money which often leads to higher rates for the insured. A loss ratio below 95 percent means the insurance company is saving money which can lead to lower rates.
"(The loss ratio) has to be at 95 percent to break even because the insurance company charges a 5 percent administrative fee," Kwiatkowski said.
"Anything below (95 percent) they're not paying out as much, which means there's a savings to the insurance company, ... so the lower your loss ratio is, the better the rate you're going to get."
The district's 2014 loss ratio averaged out to 59.81 percent, with a high of just over 81 percent in March and a low of just over 32 percent in October.
Kwiatkowski is currently investigating insurance options for the district for the 2015-16 school year. Jacobi said those figures, along with the district initiatives such as annual wellness exams, will help Kwiatkowski hopefully save the district money on insurance costs.
"We've really been helping our employees understand the importance of being healthy with our wellness activities and our assessments in the spring to bring it to the forefront, to take care of yourself," she said.
"Many educators are caregivers themselves, so when you're a full-time worker and a caregiver, you personally often come in last. We have to make sure that they're still taking care of themselves because that's critical."
"We believe that all of these efforts are going to pay off in lower premiums and being able to keep the best plan we can for our employees at lower costs," she added.
Because all employee absences, regardless of reason, are quantified in one account, Kwiatkowski said there are no hard numbers to prove the clinic is helping to reduce absenteeism, but she believes the clinic is "definitely" helping achieve that goal.
"It's hard to run those numbers because when employees are gone - and they could be gone for many reasons, not just for being sick but for things like professional development - it goes into one account," Kwiatkowski said. "So, it's not as easy to be able to pull those numbers, but it is definitely helping. When we were looking at the hours for the clinic, and we've changed those a few times, we thought mornings and afternoons would be the best and that's not the case. We now have some midday hours and afterschool hours so we know that our employees are utilizing it during the day on their prep time or during lunch to take care of an issue and come back so we don't have to sub for those people."
"We know it's definitely working," she added.
The district sends out a weekly newsletter which, at the beginning of the school year, included a section devoted to stressing the need for additional substitute teachers in the area. Jacobi said that is a statewide problem that has nothing to do with the clinic.
"There is a substitute shortage, I would say statewide, but it's probably even bigger than that," she said.
"Being a substitute is a really hard job because you're walking into a new situation with a new group of kids, and when it's the middle school and high school level it could be 100 kids or more. You don't know them. You're following plans that you didn't help create, ... so it's a very, very difficult job and it's hard to find people that are willing to take that on."
As a way to combat the shortage, Jacobi said the district is working many avenues to recruit new substitutes.
"We advertise in the paper. We advertise at universities. We know that we have a handful of recent graduates that were student-teachers in our district that we will be looking at helping complete the paperwork so that they can become substitutes until the hiring process really opens up," she said.
"We encourage people to come in that are even just maybe interested (in becoming a substitute) to give them more information and help them with the paperwork if they need it."
Overall, Kwiatkowski and Jacobi said they are very happy with clinic.
"I think it's going great," Kwiatkowski said. "We were the first district in northern Wisconsin to do this and since then there's probably five or six schools that have opened up clinics around us and even more in the Appleton and Milwaukee area. This is obviously a trend that is proving successful and I would definitely highly recommend it to any bigger employer, not just from the point of view of saving money but also taking care of your employees."
"I would follow up with exactly what she said," Jacobi added. "We know that we are in a fiscal situation where we have to be as fiscally responsible as possible, so anything we can do to bring our costs down, we are going to do it. ... Anything we can do to bring insurance costs down while helping our employees stay healthy is critical. I would definitely recommend it to other school districts."
Both women had nothing but good things to say about Aspirus.
"They're wonderful," Jacobi said.
"They provide more than just what the clinic provides," Kwiatkowski added. "They do a lunch-and-learn with our employees, they do meet-and-greets, they send educational materials to our employees and their families, and all of that is in addition to the service they provide with the clinic. The district does not pay for those extra services."
Marcus Nesemann may be reached at [email protected].
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