MORGANTOWN — An initiative that began in 2014 under former City Manager Jeff Mikorski may come to fruition in 2019.
During a recent Morgantown City Council planning session, City Manager Paul Brake said Assistant City Manager Emily Muzzarelli is leading an effort to get a small employee health clinic open in the Morgantown Municipal Airport terminal building.
As a self-insured organization, the move is an effort to reduce claims made by city employees, thereby lowering insurance costs. The city sets aside money based on what it expects to pay out in employee medical costs each year.
“This is an innovative method to control our own employee health insurance costs by having a clinic and incentivizing our employees to go without any copays or deductibles and free prescriptions,” Brake said. “This has been a very successful program elsewhere.”
Brake went on to say the clinic would not be open to the public, but only for city employees and their dependents. He said it would likely be staffed by a nurse practitioner, who would practice with a collaborating physician.
City Finance Director Jim Goff said city administration toured similar facilities operated by Charleston and South Charleston.
“It goes along with our wellness initiative, getting people accustomed to going and seeing the doctor or nurse practitioner, knowing their numbers and catching things early,” Goff said, explaining a third-party would be involved so information protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act would not be available to city administration.
The issue was introduced by Mikorski in July 2014, when the former city manager received city council approval to seek a certificate of need for an employee clinic.
At the time, Mikorski said the clinic could save the city as much as $1.6 million in its first five years.
The topic resurfaced in January 2017 when Mikorski’s replacement, Interim City Manager Glen Kelly, asked council to free up about $5,300 to address plumbing issues at the airport. It was explained that work was part of determining whether the Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization’s former office space could be turned into a clinic.
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