Frustrated with the high cost of providing medical insurance for its 12,000 employees, Quad/Graphics decided to set up its own health care system. In an article in the Wall Street Journal (available by subscription only), staff writer Vanessa Fuhrmans describes a fast growing company that was able to think way out of the box to solve an intractable problem. Quad/Graphics spends about $6,000 per employee on medical costs, fully 30% less than the average company in its home state of Wisconsin.
This is certainly not a model that most companies could replicate. You need a large concentration of employees in just a few locations. Perhaps even more important, you need a high level of trust between management and workers. Fuhrmans points out that Quad has a long history of harmonious relations between management and workers. If the workers distrusted management, they would not entertain the idea of going to management’s own doctors — not just for their own medical services, but for their entire families as well.
Quad employs its own internists, pediatricians and family practitioners. It operates its own labs, pharmacies, and rehab centers. They contract directly with local hospitals and specialists for advanced care. It is also important to note that doctors’s bonuses are tied to patient evaluations and health outcomes — unlike our mainstream medicine which values the number of contacts above all. Quad doctors have a full half hour to spend with patients, which leads, naturally enough, to a highly effective disease prevention program.
Workplace Injury
The article did not address how workplace injuries were handled, so I sent Ms. Fuhrmans an email inquiry. She responded within minutes, explaining that Quad does indeed handle many of its own workers’ compensation cases. “This is where they see a lot of their savings.” It makes perfect sense that workers would trust the same physicians who treat their families to manage workplace injury and illness. I would surmise that their in-house rehab facilities are quite capable of managing workplace injuries. Even though “occupational medicine” was not listed in the article as an available specialty, a progressive company with an inhouse medical capacity would naturally keep a strong focus on returning injured employees to full duty as quickly as possible.
The Quad model has been so effective, other employers have contracted with QuadMed LLC to provide in-house services. The article cites Briggs & Stratton and Rockwell Automation, both of which have asked QuadMed to operate full-service clinics for their employees in Wisconsin.
Confidentiality Conundrum
Fuhrmans points out that employees do have some concerns about privacy issues. They obviously don’t want personal details about their health (or the health of family members) to end up in a supervisor’s hands. Quad medical staff sign confidentiality agreements, promising to keep patient information within the clinic. Their computer systems are separate from those of the factories.
This is all well and good. But there certainly is an opportunity for ethical tensions. Here’s just one example. A worker comes to the clinic with a knee injury suffered while playing hockey on the weekend. He cannot afford to miss any time from work. Should the doctor release him to regular duty? Let’s assume the worker does continue at his job. What if he comes in the next day claiming that work has aggravated (or even caused) his knee problem? How should the doctor respond?
It is not difficult to envision doctors getting caught in the middle of some very challenging issues. Workers’ compensation places tremendous leverage in the doctor’s hands. The assumption is always that the doctor is a disinterested party. But when the doctor is in effect an employee of the same company, this may create the potential for a conflict of interest.
Finally, I wonder about the separation between Quad and QuadMed. Is the latter a “third pary medical provider” and thereby subject to lawsuits for malpractice? Federal confidentiality standards are very strict on the personal health side (and more flexible on the workers’ comp side). Once again, it is not hard to imagine circumstances where the doctors are truly caught in the middle.
Quad/Graphics deserves a lot of credit for tackling the health care dilemma directly. In many respects, it’s the classic American story. Faced with a huge national problem, creative managers figure out a way to solve it on the local level. From our perspective, the roots of the solution lay in the fundamental trust that existed between management and workers. There is simply no substitute for that kind of trust, which may be the most powerful collateral for change in the ever-challenging world of business.