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Five Lebanon County school districts are considering an employer-sponsored healthcare clinic through Penn Medicine’s HealthWorks that would provide employees primary care and counseling services without co-pays or insurance billing.
Lebanon School District has already opted out, but the other five public school districts as well as the Lebanon County Career and Technology Center have been pitched to launch an employer-sponsored healthcare program with Penn Medicine’s HealthWorks.
Keith Fox, director of employer relations and strategic growth for Penn Medicine, gave a presentation Tuesday about the HealthWorks program at a meeting of the LCCTC’s joint operating committee. He noted that he’s also pitched to every other school district.
“The simplest way to say it, it’s convenient for you, the primary care, for your employees,” Fox said. “And it’s sponsored by an employer with a partnership with Penn Medicine HealthWorks.”
Launched in 2017 at Lititz’s Clair Global, Fox said there are 12 facilities, mostly in Lancaster County and some in Berks County, that offer a variety of healthcare services to employees.
“We have over 60 employee partners, almost 13,000 lives that we’re managing through the healthworks practices. It’s membership-based, meaning that an employer sponsors it,” Fox told JOC members, adding their are seven school districts already in the program elsewhere. “And the way it works is the members. We don’t bill. We don’t collect co-pays. It’s like having a gym membership to your primary care and counseling services. There’s types of services that you typically see in it.”
Fox said many services provided by primary physicians are available at their centers.
“Anything you go to your primary care for, you can get done at a HealthWorks practice, whether you’re feeling sick, you want an annual physical, you have lab work that needs done. We have EKGs. We have a lot of point-of-care machines there,” he said. “So anything that we do inside that facility, there’s no billing of insurance. There’s no collection of co-pays.”
Medicines are also available onsite, according to Fox.
“The other cool thing is we have a lot of medications there. So these are like your ‘sick’ medications, so amoxicillin, Z-Pak, things like that, that provide a convenient one-stop for feeling well in medications,” he said. “We have lab tests there. We have a lab or a texting app called SPRUCE, which lets you communicate directly to your provider.”
Fox highlighted the rapidity in patient response times through the app.
“So whether it’s the nurse or the provider, they’re answering these texts real-time. During business hours, we track this. It’s like 95% of our texts get answered in less than 15 minutes,” added Fox.
There are other benefits, too, he said.
“You can say it’s HIPAA compliant. So you can send pictures. You can ask questions. You can have a virtual visit through it. We find that schools in particular really like this thing because it allows you not to even go (to a doctor’s office),” Fox said, later adding that HealthWorks uses healthcare record-keeping software like other providers. “You can get it done virtually. You can make this your primary care, or you can use it when it’s convenient. So if you have somewhere you love going and you want to use this when it’s convenient, you can do so.”
This program does not rely on the traditional co-pay system or a high deductible that’s owed by the patient, according to Fox.
“Under this model, we collect that as a membership fee. When you show up as a patient, you’re not paying a co-pay and we’re not billing your company, in this case the CTC. So the savings happen for the member because they’re not paying the membership, the employer is and the potential ROI (return on investment) for the employer is that we’re not billing insurance,” Fox said. “So as a self-funded employer, you no longer have that claim showing up by them going to either primary care, urgent care, or emergency (room).”
A final benefit highlighted by Fox is patient scheduling.
“The other unique part is when you call a primary care now, they’ll often tell you when you can be seen by them. We try to flip that around and ask when it’s convenient for you,” Fox said. “Again, because we take care of less people in this model, we have more flexibility to see you when it works best for you.”
Fox said there are two models.
“So this can work one of two ways. You can either join our existing network, which I’ll show you shortly. Or what we’re proposing here is the Lebanon County school districts have come together and said, ‘Why have we created one that’s conveniently located as we can make it for the majority of people?’ So that’s the two existing ways of doing that.”
Based on research conducted by HealthWorks, a recommendation was made for a centralized clinic within Lebanon County, most likely in a retail business center.
“Once we did that we said, ‘Well, if we located the facilities, I’ll say somewhat just outside the city, that we would be servicing the majority of employees and the buildings across the districts,’” Fox said.
The proposal to the school districts would include two kinds of services.
“What we’re proposing is primary care and counseling services. So any of the members would have access to primary care, counseling for things like, this is a licensed counselor, it’s not a psychiatrist or psychologist, but it’s a counselor that can help with things like depression, anxiety, those types of things, where they would have up to 12 sessions of care through the primary care to counseling,” Fox said. “It would be most likely a physician assistant with a licensed nurse practitioner and medical assistant supporting them.”
Fox said Penn Medicine would pay capital costs for the location, which would be on the south side of the city.
“We’re saying to find a retail location that’s not on any one campus, but that would be in a more retail location. We, as Penn Medicine, would fit out the facility and take on that cost of the fit out and the FF&E (furniture, fixtures and equipment),” Fox said. “What we’re asking for school districts is to consider a multi-year agreement for membership into that facility.”
He said not every district has to participate for the program to be viable in Lebanon County.
JOC members did not take any action on the proposal at this meeting.
Director’s October report
Other LCCTC business
In other business, the JOC unanimously voted to:
- Sign a memorandum of understanding with Penn College to provide dual enrollment opportunities for students.
- Have T&T/Lanco Inc., a COSTARS participant, repair the Well McLain 1888 boiler at a cost of $23,900.
- Agree to pay monthly invoices, including bills/transfers totaling $1,006,856.98. Included in this amount are the following Capital Reserve Fund checks: Woodland Contractors, Inc., $3,923.00; Steckbeck Engineering & Surveying, $39.25; Beers+Hoffman Architects, $337.50; Fidevia, $1,540; Steckbeck Engineering & Surveying, $21.25.
- Hire Stacey O’Mara as a substitute secretary at a rate of $15 per hour for the 2025-26 academic year.
- Declare the following equipment obsolete: two 75kVA distribution transformers, which were purchased with Perkins funding during the 2017-18 school year; and two wind/solar Lab volt trainers.
- Accept the following policies for first review. Policy 103 Vol IV – Discrimination/Title IX Sexual Harassment Affecting Students; Policy 103.1 – Nondiscrimination – Qualified Students With Disabilities; Policy 104 – Nondiscrimination in Employment Practices; and Policy 104 Vol IV – Discrimination/Title IX Sexual Harassment Affecting Staff.
- Accept the financial report as of Oct. 31 and the cafeteria report for October.
- Approve the JOC’s Oct. 21 meeting minutes.
October 2025 financial report
At the conclusion of the public meeting, the JOC went into executive session to discuss personnel matters.
Next meeting
The JOC meets the third Tuesday of each month at 6:30 p.m. in the board/conference room (D-144) at the school, 833 Metro Drive, Lebanon. The next meeting is on Dec. 16 and is a reorganizational meeting of the board of directors.
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