Mike LaPenna is Principal and founder of The LaPenna Group, Inc. and provides strategic and financial consulting services to the health care industry. For twenty-five years, he has provided support to physicians, hospitals, provider networks, and employers for their strategic and tactical initiatives.

Mike is widely considered a thought leader in the on-site clinic arena. He has published a book on the concept and runs the industry-leading blog, onsiteclinics.org. 

Recently Mike paid a visit to CareATC® in Tulsa Okla., during which I was able to sit down with him and discuss the onsite clinic industry in a general sense. This blog post serves as a preview of our discussion – you can obtain a copy of the full interview here. 

Jeremy: What is it about the on-site clinic industry that first caught your attention?

LaPenna: Originally, we just discovered that nobody was talking or writing about them [on-site clinics]. When you find out there’s a topic that hasn’t been written about or blogged about, you go and do just that.

It wasn’t too hard. Our company had a lot of resident intelligence and data, and nothing else was being published about the industry. As a result, we started Onsiteclinics.org. Additionally, we did the book, a regular newsletter, and we launched the National Association of Worksite Health Centers.

All of that stuff is meant in a very, very pure fashion. It was designed to give people platforms for discussion and discovery. We think that if people know more about the industry, then the consultants and the vendors and everybody else will do well.

Jeremy: From your experience, what have employers benefited from the MOST regarding the on-site clinic model?

LaPenna: I see three things:

1. The first is access. Its often not well understood or talked about, but one of the most critical issues for employers is simply providing better access to primary care. 
   
   
2. The second is that many employers look at this not as a cost-saving thing, but rather as a best-in-class service. The employers that we work with don’t want to provide bad health care, or they don’t want to provide benefits that people don’t like. Rather, they want to have people [employees/prospects] look at them and know they have world-class benefits. 
   
   
3. The last is that employers are finding out that they need a health content expert. It’s become a problem because many employers have a benefits consultant, a disease-state management process, a safety occupational health person, and a company doctor. All of this stuff is duplicative and in some cases internally competitive. On-site clinics can help consolidate much of this effort by saying, “I’m totally looking at your whole healthcare spend, that’s my job.” 

Interested in reading the full interview? Get it by clicking here or following the link below: