Emergency-room visits by municipal workers plunged 18.Five percent in the first quarter of fiscal 2021 in contrast to exactly the same period this past year, following the city tripled the co-pay from $50 to $150, officials said.
The decline of nearly 5,200 ER visits – from 28,108 to 22,913 – generated $9.Two million in savings for the city in only a quarter.
The use of other high-cost medical services – for example specialty care, physical rehabilitation and radiology procedures – also trended “significantly lower than projected” after those co-pay fees were raised on July 1, too.
The precise savings won't be known until later this month, according to a status update in the Office at work Relations to Mayor de Blasio.
“Initial reports . . . make sure our health-care plans are demonstrating significant alterations in [medical] utilization patterns that are attributable to the program changes,” reads the Dec. 22 letter, which was recently posted online.
The co-pay increases were only available in July following a city review found that a lot of municipal workers were relying on emergency care along with other high-cost medical treatment instead of on primary and preventative care.
The cost-cutting measures are members of a 2021 agreement using the Municipal Labor Council to chop $3.4 billion in health-care costs by the end of fiscal 2021.
Thus far, the plan has sparked criticism in the City Council – particularly because hundreds of millions of dollars in savings were claimed by relying on inflated projections for health-care premiums.
In February, City Hall also irked members of the council by quietly plugging a $58 million shortfall in the projected savings using money from a health stabilization fund that's meant for other purposes.
Officials asserted new wellness programs for municipal workers have sparked a lot more than 10,000 free flu vaccinations and spurred a lot more than 13,000 employees to join Dieters programs.
Smoking cessation and anti-hypertension programs have been in the whole shebang, as well.
City officials will also be planning to concentrate on the retiree health program and the specialty prescription-drug program for further saving measures.
But they say they're currently on the right track in the future within $150 million of the four-year savings goal even if they don't make any extra changes.
About 75 % from the city's 300,000 municipal workers are covered underneath the health-care savings plan
