Central Bucks School District is taking the lead in offering a new approach to health care that promises to provide better, more proactive care to employees at lower costs.

Under the plan, PeopleOne Health is now providing primary care to CBSD participants with no copay, deductible or coinsurance payment at a new clinic in Doylestown. Participants are also enrolled in the PeopleOne Personal Pharmacist program, which was previously offered to staff in the 2021-22 school year, as well as a free, world-class wellness platform. Using this digital wellness platform provides access to a health coach and to features such as recipes, internal  engagement and personal wellness goal-setting tools.

Year after year, employers around the country struggle with rising insurance premiums that often get passed along to employees. The PeopleOne option model upends the traditional healthcare model by offering an alternative that can help save employees up to 70% in out-of-pocket expenses, while providing 24/7 access to a provider, same or next-day appointments and no-rush doctor visits of at least 30 minutes, along with a range of other services.

Participants will still need to use their traditional insurance coverage through Aetna for hospital visits and other forms of non-primary care, but those related costs can be mitigated by the introduction this year of Healthcare Reimbursement Accounts that allow employees to be reimbursed for health expenses.

PeopleOne Health is based in western Pennsylvania and serves more than 5,000 members. The Altoona Area School District, the 18^th-largest in Pennsylvania, currently partners with PeopleOne Health. CBSD is the company’s first client in the Philadelphia region.

PeopleOne said the employers it works with typically reduce their health care costs on average by 25% to 30%. CBSD expects to generate annual savings of nearly $3 million if it achieves a 25% enrollment rate for teachers and administrators, said Superintendent Dr. Abram Lucabaugh.

“At CBSD, we have a deep commitment to innovation and finding new ways to provide high-quality insurance benefits to our staff at an affordable price is one example of that,” Lucabaugh said. “PeopleOne Health is a company that is truly on the leading edge of a paradigm shift in the delivery of primary medical care.”

The program was recently featured in a story in the Philadelphia Business Journal. The story can be found here (password protected).