Kanawha County employees and their family members may soon be able to get medical care at a clinic in the county ambulance authority.
The Kanawha County Ambulance Authority and the county commission are working out an agreement to expand the hours of a clinic at the ambulance authority and accommodate the county's employees and their dependents.
"We are just looking to expand on [the existing clinic], offer it to family members and expand our hours and availability that the clinic is open," said Monica Mason, director of education for the ambulance authority. "In doing that, we're looking to partner with the county commission to work with their employees and family members as well."
The ambulance authority has operated a clinic for its employees for the past two or three years, administrator Larry Cole said.
Cole said the clinic started as a furtherance of the relationship that medical directors have with their paramedics.
"We just put in an infirmary and the original intent was to take care of our folks and their families and also to manage and control our [workers] comp costs, because our comp rates are high," Cole said. "They're like every other ambulance service in the world."
The clinic treats episodic and acute care issues, Cole said.
Cole said the county's clinic would run much like the City of Charleston Employee Wellness Center, located on Morris Street.
The ambulance authority recently applied to the West Virginia Healthcare Authority for a certificate of need for the expansion of the clinic, which will cost $255,000, according to the application. The amount is for renovations including installing an elevator to make the clinic compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act and to buy medical equipment. The renovations have already been done, Cole said.
The county and the ambulance authority is still working out the details, including what the county would pay in order to have its employees use the clinic, county manager Jennifer Herrald said. Herrald and Cole said officials hope to have the clinic accessible to county employees by the end of the year. Herrald said county employees will be able to use the clinic instead of going to an urgent care or emergency room to see a doctor.
County employees will have to pay for some medications, but the goal is that they won't have to pay for further out-of-pocket costs, Herrald said.
Herrald said the county anticipates saving a "substantial amount" on health insurance costs by using the clinic. The county has more than 500 full and part-time employees, all of which will have access to the clinic, Herrald said.
The ambulance authority has been doing the county employees' annual wellness exams, which are required for employees who are on the county's health insurance plan, for the past three years, Herrald said.
Herrald said the wellness exams with the ambulance authority have run smoothly and she thinks, based on that, the employees will like have the clinic available to them.
Reach Lori Kersey at lori.kersey@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1240 or follow @LoriKerseyWV on Twitter.