Near-Site Care for School Districts
Advanced Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine's location at 402 Eureka Street is part of a multi-specialty clinic delivering high quality, low cost services to Ripon Area School District employees in 2023.
Only a generation ago, you’d be hard-pressed to find a school district in Wisconsin self-funding their health insurance.
Oh, how times have changed.
About 40% of school districts statewide are now self-funded, and that number continues to trend upwards. With self-funding, employers pay for claims out-of-pocket as they are presented instead of paying a pre-determined premium to an insurance carrier for a fully funded plan.
In essence, the employer becomes the insurance company.
One of the most recent to join the ranks is the Ripon Area School District (RASD), which will go self-funded in 2023. They will add a near-site medical clinic as well, with multiple care providers including a primary care physician, cardiologists, an orthopedic surgeon, and physical therapists available free to RASD staff.
Advanced Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine, a leader in direct contracting and onsite/near-site physical and occupational therapy care, will supply the physical therapy at the near-site clinic.
School districts must be laser-focused on the cost of health care, generally the second biggest budget outlay after salaries. With rising health care costs, districts know that money has to come from somewhere, and the simple truth is this: when revenue doesn’t increase and the cost of health care and operations does, those dollars will come from just about every student-centered program in the district.
Becoming wise consumers of health care is on every district’s and employer’s agenda—looking at data, doing their homework, finding the best care at the best cost—so money that is saved can go to the education of students, facility needs, or employee cost of living increases.
To learn more about the money-saving steps being taken in Ripon and other districts across the state, read Bethany Gengler’s article from the Ripon Commonwealth Press here: