News Release
Opening School-Based Health Clinics Can Lower Teacher Health Costs
Jun 20, 2018
Teachers who used school-based health care clinics as the source of primary care were significantly more likely to have fewer inpatient admissions and lower annual health care cost, and were less likely to be absent from work.
Published in: Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine [Epub May 2018]. doi: 10.1097/JOM.0000000000001373
Posted on RAND.org on July 03, 2018
This article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.
To examine the impact of worksite clinics on health care utilization and cost, self-reported health status, and student achievement growth in a public school district.
We used insurance claims, health risk assessment, and student achievement growth data for active teachers during 2007-2015. A difference-in-differences approach was applied to measure the impact of worksite clinics.
Compared to using a community-based clinic as the usual source of primary care, using a worksite clinic was associated with significantly lower inpatient admissions (53 vs. 31 per 1,000 teacher years), annual health care cost ($5,043 vs. $4,298 in 2016 US dollars, a difference of $62 per teacher per month), and annual absent work hours (63 vs. 61). No significant differences were detected in self-reported health status or student achievement growth.
Worksite clinics reduce teacher health care cost and absenteeism.
This article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.
This report is part of the RAND Corporation External publication series. Many RAND studies are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, as chapters in commercial books, or as documents published by other organizations.
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