Video: New Potential Health Care Option For One North MS Area

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI)- There could soon be a new health care option for Columbus, Lowndes County and Columbus Light and Water employees.

Medical Analysis makes a pitch to create a private clinic for those workers.

This move could affect more than six hundred employees.

“In the climate that we’re in with healthcare, people are looking for options because premiums are going up, not only to employees but also to entities, to the city of Columbus, they’re facing higher premiums, higher deductibles, higher co-pay,” said Todd Garlington, vice president of business development at Medical Analysis.

Which is why city and county leaders, along with Columbus Light and Water employees listened closely when Medical Analysis proposed creating a private clinic.

“It’s a comprehensive primary clinic that’ll do everything from minor suturing, to simple EKG’s, well women, sick women visits,” said Garlington. “Sometime we’ll do men’s health month, you may have a women’s health awareness month, but it’s a comprehensive primary care, a full scope of primary care.”

If implemented, only employees from those three entities will use the private clinic, along with any dependents, ages two and up, who are on their health plan.

“This is a non-claim based model, we don’t accept insurance in our clinic,” said Garlington. “We contract with the entities that we work with for a fixed flat fee and so there’s no insurance claims. So, the idea would be to eliminate claims enough that we drive claims down enough by employees using our clinic to not only pay for the cost of the clinic with the savings to the entity.”

The new clinic would not replace the health insurance the city currently offers.

However, all three entities must come to an agreement on an interlocal contract.

“In order for it to work the way we got it laid out right now is we need a kind of critical mass number of employees to launch and and get it open is about five to 600,” said Garlington. “So with the three of them we;re at that 600 mark, but if one of them were to decide not to, then we’d probably be delayed until potentially another entity was found or another arrangement was made.”

Everyone left today’s meeting with a plan to discuss the recommendation of this move and the inter-local contract at their next board meetings.