INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — An advisory panel recommends the Indian River County School District pick a company to run its proposed health clinic that had its contract severed with Port St. Lucie after city employees there complained about the high-turnover rate of doctors and unclean conditions.
The company, CareHere of Tennessee, currently provides health-care services to about 20 governments in Florida.
Indian River County School Board members last week again discussed the clinic, an issue that was first brought up 1 1/2 years ago but has picked up momentum in recent months.
The district solicited proposals from nearly three dozen companies, including four in Indian River County, to run the clinic for its 2,000 workers. Throw in retired school district employees and their spouses and children and the number of people eligible for a free clinic and free prescriptions jumps to nearly 4,000.
During their discussions last week, school officials talked about broadening the scope of clinic services to include a nutritionist, a dietician and an exercise physiologist.
While board members Carol Johnson and Karen Disney-Braun seemed to really embrace the idea, board member Jeff Pegler was a more reticent.
Pegler said the board was nowhere near ready to vote on the clinic and much more information is needed, including a survey of employees to determine if they would use the facility.
Prior to the meeting, Superintendent Fran Adams said she wanted the clinic up and running by January. The school board will have another work shop on the clinic Oct. 9. No date for a vote has been set.
Pegler said he would not want to vote on the matter hours after the workshop when the board holds a business meeting.
Having the matter come on the heels of the successful campaign to convince Indian River County voters to approve a tax increase next year when two previously referendums are set to expire seems risky, Pegler said.
“My concern is the community,” said Pegler, noting he is worried about how taxpayers will view a health clinic being established so soon after they were asked for more than $32 million in tax increases to pay for basic education services.
Johnson and Disney-Braun said they wanted the community to buy into the idea as well, but Johnson said employees have gone years without raises and need something such as a free clinic as a reward.
The number of on-site clinics in the public and private sector is growing as self-insured businesses and agencies find their employees utilize the health clinics and reduce health costs. Use of the clinics would be voluntary.
CareHere officials said they could operate the clinics for roughly $1 million a year. The start-up cost for the first year will be higher as the district would have to buy numerous prescription drugs, supplies and possibly an X-ray machine.
CareHere manages 100 clinics nationwide.
In Florida, it is teamed up with Crowne Consulting to administer 20 different government operations including four school districts.
Employee response to the clinics prompted some governments to offer more than one clinic for its employees.
The St. John’s County School District was the first in the state to open an on-site clinic three years ago. It now offers three clinics for its employees, dependents and retirees. It also uses CareHere/Crowne group.
“I will tell you that the employees are happy with the clinics we run,” said Mark Bailey, who is an insurance broker for St. John’s County School District.
Bailey is not compensated by CareHere or Crowne. To do so would be a conflict, said Bailey, adding he represents the district not the people who provide the services.
When the city of Vero Beach floated the idea for a clinic in 2008 a Palm Beach consultant, the Gehring Group would have been paid $179,000 if the deal have gone though.
“We didn’t want to be driven by compensation,” Bailey said. He said his job is to broker the best deals and ultimately save the school district money.
The Indian River County School District uses Brown and Brown consulting out of central Florida to broker its insurance needs.
The firm recently sorted the various health-clinic proposals and took part in the interview process of the four firms that made the district’s short list.
An employee at the company’s office in Leesburg said he would have to call the school district and to get permission to discuss anything when a reporter contacted the office. The employee then failed to return the call from Vero Beach 32963 about whether the company is being compensated and what other role it is playing in the establishment of the clinic.
In 2007, Port St. Lucie became the first city in the state to open a health clinic.
The city has since worked with three health-care firms since it cut its ties with CareHere more than a year ago.
Port St. Lucie benefits specialist Claudia McCaskill told Vero Beach 32963 that employees didn’t think they were getting the best care from the CareHere/Crowne team.
That came as a surprise to Ray Tomlinson, who founded Crown Consulting as a human resources company and then later grew it into an insurance brokerage company.
After researching the growing trends of employee health clinics for 2½ years, Tomlinson said he approached CareHere and formed a business partnership with them. Tomlinson is now the vice president of the Florida operations for the newly formed company.
Tomlinson appeared surprised to hear what Port St. Lucie said about CareHere. He said he tore up the contract after it was obvious that politics was coming into play with a number of new administrators and elected officials there.
“We never got the word that they weren’t happy,” Tomlinson said. He said he grew frustrated and cancelled the contract when it appeared the city was going to hire another agency and attempted to bring a CareHere doctor over to its new operation.
We were blessed to have a health-care center there for three years,” Tomlinson said.
He said the only other agency to severe ties with his organization was the Lee County Sheriff’s Office and the city of Palm Bay.
Tomlinson said its ties with Lee County were cut after the agency switched third-party insurance carriers and that group said it offered its own clinic.
As for Palm Bay, Tomlinson said the city moved from being self-insured to fully insured and typically there is no cost savings to run a health clinic.
“I think that is a very good track record,” Tomlinson said.
