Dive Brief:

• An article at HREonline looks at the expanded use of on-site healthcare as a way to improve care, reduce cost.
• New research from Towers Watson suggests employers are planning to double down on that investment in the near future.
• The firm's 2015 Employer-Sponsored Health Care Centers Survey polled 105 benefits professionals that currently offer employer-sponsored health centers (from within a larger sample). Among those 105 organizations, 38% intend to add new centers in the next two years and 66% plan to expand on or enhance the services they currently offer.

Dive Insight:

The goals these companies hope to achieve are fairly straightforward, Allan Khoury, senior health management consultant at Towers Watson, told HREOnline.

“We know that 75 percent of our respondents cited increasing productivity as an objective,” said Khoury, noting that 74% indicated that they seek to reduce healthcare costs and 66% hope to improve employee access to healthcare services.

According to Karen Marlo, vice president at the Washington-based National Business Group on Health, employers with on-site health services already in place have begun to reap the rewards of a healthier and more productive workforce, which is driving these plans for expansion, From strictly an HR perspective, offering on-site health services also “helps position them as a partner in human capital,” she told HREOnline. “It’s a great opportunity to help meet the physical and mental demands of employees, which leads workers to be more present on the job.”