Case Study: Employee Health and Wellness Initiative from Utz

Employee health and wellness programs in the past have been focused on helping employees prevent common office health issues with things like yoga classes and healthy snacks. Potato chip maker Utz recently opened a primary care facility on their campus to help employees directly with health issues that crop up. Could this up the ante in health and wellness initiatives for companies in all industries?

Utz’s New Health and Wellness Center

Utz is the largest snack food company based in Hanover, Pennsylvania, a town dubbed the Snack Food Capital by locals for its high concentration of snack food companies. In 2016, the company opened an in-house primary care clinic at its headquarters, built to help about 2,000 employees and their dependents with their healthcare needs. According to company spokespeople, Utz saved about $1.3 million in health care expenses for its Hanover employees and their dependents. Its annual growth in health care spending dropped from seven percent before the clinic was built, to 2.6 percent now.

The health center recorded about 5,000 visits in 2018. 73% of the Utz health plan Hanover beneficiaries came to the clinic at least once. Overall, the plan was successful. How was Utz able to see savings and returns on their investment when many other similar-sized companies have failed?

Taking a Risk

A company setting up its own primary care facility is not new in the employee health and wellness market. What was unusual about Utz’s move in 2016 is that these clinics are usually built by massive companies with over 5,000 employees. In fact, a recent study by Mercer found that a third of such companies have built primary care facilities for their employees, up from about a quarter of them in 2012.

Employee health is a huge expense for companies of Utz’s size, no matter if they sell salty snacks or microprocessors. In the past, similar-sized companies have tried to stem healthcare costs by providing their employees with initiatives like chronic disease education, regular wellness check-ups and evaluations, fitness classes, gym memberships, and more. It seems like many organizations are constantly looking for the next gimmick they think will help keep their employees healthier and their healthcare costs under control.

And there’s the operative word in all this: ‘control.’ Despite their insurance policies and health and wellness initiatives, many companies don’t have control over how much they’re spending on employee health. The annual costs often come down to chance. How many employees had to deal with serious medical conditions this year? How many sick days did we have to eat? From this perspective, Utz creating an in-house primary care clinic makes sense. They give employees an easy option to get their prescriptions filled, make appointments with their doctors, and even get their blood work done in one place. Employees are empowered to take control of their health and wellness while the company gains full control over the medical services provided under their insurance.

Aside from the quantifiable savings reported by Utz in its health and wellness spending alone, employees are able to focus on their work duties knowing that they’re saving hundreds or more every year by using the Utz health and wellness plan. Perhaps opening in-house primary care clinics for employees will become a trend for mid-size companies trying to cut their health and wellness costs going forward.