EASTON, Pa. — A proposal for a Northampton County-owned clinic serving its employees returned from the dead Wednesday after officials asked the county council to award a contract it had previously rejected.
The original contract, voted down last July, called for New Jersey-based Integrity Health to build and operate a private healthcare facility for Northampton County employees, with the promise of savings.
Because the county is self-insured, taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for the bill when an employee goes to see a doctor.
The health center gives the county a way to offer medical care more or less at cost by paying the doctors and other staff’s salaries, maintaining the facility and ordering supplies.
If an employee goes to the clinic instead of an outside provider, the county saves the difference between their cost to provide care and whatever the employee would have paid otherwise.
“The ability to move people out of an ER environment into a primary care environment, robustly defined, including X rays, saves a lot of money,” Integrity Health President Douglas Forrester said during a county council committee meeting Wednesday.
The council first considered a five-year contract with Integrity Health at $3.25 million, McClure said, plus the cost of salaries, initial set-up expenses, and supplies.
Commissioners ultimately declined to approve the contract after several members questioned whether the promised savings would actually materialize.
In the time since Integrity’s pitch has not changed. But the composition of the county council has.
Two newly-elected members — Kelly Keegan and Jeff Warren — glowingly backed the revived measure Wednesday, with Warren pushing to vote on the proposal as soon as Thursday.
The third, Ken Kraft, said he needed more information to decide how he would vote, though he supported establishing the health center during his campaign.
Ahead of their elections, County Executive Lamont McClure said he would bring plans for the health center before council “in January” if all three won.
For his part, council member Ron Heckman predicted all three would ultimately vote to award the clinic contract, to which they took exception.
“I need time to process before I make my vote. I’ve made that known to the council members and to the county executive."Northampton County Commissioner Jeffrey Corpora
Jeffrey Corpora, who was appointed to the body in February, said after Wednesday’s meeting he has a lot of information to wade through.
“I need time to process before I make my vote,” he said. "I’ve made that known to the council members and to the county executive. So once I get through my research and look at the different facets, I'll come to a conclusion."
Some of the longer-tenured members of the council did not seem eager to revisit the extended, contentious fight over whether a clinic is a sound financial investment.
“I know you guys are new,” Heckman said. “But I have a whole file. We've done this, and I've made contacts and calls. This is pretty much the same stuff… but there’s a lot more to it than what we got today.”
