How this school district saved on healthcare without sacrificing benefits

For employers and employees alike, the cost of healthcare is becoming the largest source of their stress. But instead of letting rising premiums force them into low-quality care, this school district found a better solution. 

On average, employers in the U.S. spend $7,911 for single coverage and $22,463 for family coverage annually on health insurance for their employees, according to employee management platform Complete Payroll Solutions. By 2026, the cost is expected to rise another 10%, according to estimations by management consulting firm McKinsey — putting organizations in a precarious position when it comes to keeping their plans both affordable and beneficial to their workforce.

"[Healthcare spending] has been this way for a while — it's nothing new," says Beth Curran, the senior director of risk management at Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) in Orlando, Florida. "But now, school districts are seeing a decline in enrollment which means we are losing funding. It's one pot of money for raises and for health insurance; we had to find a way to balance that out."

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For years, OCPS has supported their employees with three health plans: One with a $300 dollar deductible and zero cost to the employee; a standard option with $400-500 deductibles; and a high-deductible plan with low premiums. But despite their relatively competitive offering, the school district knew they needed a complete overhaul if they wanted to keep their plans affordable and accessible for all employees' needs.

A partnership with PeopleOne Health checked all the boxes. PeopleOne Health is a third-party primary care provider with clinics in every major city across the country, including Orlando. The provider acts as an addition to OCPS' existing plans, giving employees access to comprehensive primary care at any of four clinics in the area, which includes the prescription and dispensation of generic prescriptions. 

To help employees save money, while encouraging preventive care, OCPS eliminated deductibles and co-payments with PeopleOne Health for procedures like mammograms and colonoscopies, after realizing cancer was a top diagnosis among staff.  

"The condition is that they have to be under our health insurance to be eligible," Curran says. "But the idea is that employees use PeopleOne as their primary care physician. If the primary care physician can manage the condition, they'll manage it and it all stays within the network." 

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If employees are facing something that can't be managed by PeopleOne Health, such as degenerative conditions that need specialized treatment, they'll still have access to OCPS' larger health network, Cigna. 

For employees, it reduces the amount of fees they would pay to different clinics and physicians while going through the process of searching for the right treatment, which can be time consuming and expensive. For OCPS, it cuts down the amount of claims coming in from other providers, as well as prescription drugs coming in from different pharmacies. Because they're only dealing with one provider, they're able to pay a flat co-payment on their end as well.  

"Everyone has had great feedback," Curran says. "Our only complaint has been that the doctor spent 45 minutes with them, which just shows that the doctors don't rush you — they take their time to get to know you." 

The partnership with PeopleOne Health has also worked as a recruiting and retention strategy. Forty-nine percent of employees will look for a new job in the next 12 months due to confusion or dissatisfaction with their benefits, according to a recent survey from Aflac. Paired with the persisting teacher shortage, the team at OCPS knew that the best way to keep employees working and engaged was to make them feel invested in. 

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"We wanted the right wages to attract teachers and we wanted benefits so we could retain them," Curran says. "We couldn't change the deductibles or the premiums and we didn't want to make changes that would potentially shift the cost from the district to the employee. We had to figure out ways to save money without actually changing the benefit."

While OCPS has only just begun their journey with PeopleOne Health, the outlook is predominantly optimistic. They've paired the effort with internal educational opportunities that walk employees through when they should visit urgent care and emergency rooms versus making appointments with their doctors to help them save even more money.  

"We're in an era where they're building new urgent care and emergency care centers on every corner and guess who's paying for those buildings? People," Curran says. "We're just trying to reduce the cost for everyone and still offer good and affordable benefits."