County Opens Employee Wellness Clinics

County employe health care clinic. Photo taken Nov. 26, 2024 by Graham Kilmer.

Milwaukee County is opening health clinics for county government employees.

The first clinic, located on the ground floor of the Milwaukee County Courthouse, opened Monday. Another at the Vel R. Phillips Juvenile Justice Center opened Tuesday,  and a third at the Wilson Park Senior Center will open next year.

Roughly 4,000 county employees, including Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) empoyees, can access the clinics for preventive health care, such as checkups, immunizations, lab tests and physicals. The clinics should also allow county employees to avoid visits to urgent care, or the emergency room, for non-emergency health care that still needs same-day attention.

“This is going to provide an opportunity for our employees to get their healthcare checkups when they need to,” County Executive David Crowley said. “But also overall help to reduce our healthcare costs within Milwaukee County so we can actually invest in other priorities, like our parks, like our transit system and things of that nature.”

The county is using approximately $3.1 million in funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to buildout and launch the clinics, which are staffed by Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin. To fund the clinics in the long-term, Crowley said the goal is to use the savings generate by the clinics to help defray their cost.

Froedtert provides workforce clinics for hundreds of employers around the state, said Patti Kneiser, vice president of employer services for Froedtert Health. The county joins a few dozen private employers that are able to build out clinics in the workplace.

Employers see savings in the short term and long term with the clinics, Kneiser said. First, there are fewer visits to the ER, urgent care and even scheduled doctors appointments. Second, better access to health care minimizes health risks in general. And third, when employees can access health care in the workplace they are not taking time off from work to do so.

“The idea is that people spend a lot of their time at work, and we know that a lot of people don’t have a primary care physician,” Kneisher said. “Despite that, even if they have insurance, a lot of people don’t access care when they could, for whatever the barrier.”