Corporate primary care grows fast

Bellin Health, a large health care provider in Green Bay, WIsconsin, has become a major innovator in the delivery of convenient and cost effective primary care.
It partnered five years ago with ShopKo, a Green Bay-based department store chain, to create 50 FastCare clinics around the country. It has also partnered with private corporations to create 45 on-site clinics for employees and families of those payers. Those are customized to the needs of the individual corporations.
George Kerwin, CEO, said Bellin started with nurse practitioners and physician assistants in the new clinics. “Within six months, we knew this was absolutely dynamic,” he said. He views them as extensions of the primary care offered in his larger health system.
Clearly, he was ahead of the curve. Large corporations are racing to set up their own on-site clinics to accomplish two ends. 1. Regain some control of the health care supply chain, and 2. Do a serious, proactive job with wellness, prevention and chronic disease management, thereby keeping people healthier and out of expensive hospitals.
Bellin has pre-empted some of that movement by private companies to establish clinics that they own and control. It’s a smart business move that will serve to cut costs in its markets.
This rearrangement of the delivery of primary care is a business model that might be viewed as “destructive innovation” and a serious threat to large, costly systems.
Bring it on. The nation needs innovation on the economic side of health care. The current business model is unaffordable and therefore a failed model. The medical side of health care can be brilliant in America, but the economic side is a disaster.