How St. Jude delivered on its mission to provide equitable care for its people through comprehensive onsite care
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a world-renowned institution located in Memphis, TN, opened in 1962 with the mission to provide equitable care to all children who suffer from catastrophic disease, regardless of race, religion, or the family’s ability to pay. This mission to focus first on care drives everything that St. Jude does – including how they approach health and wellness for their employee population, the caregivers who serve their young patients.
Beginning around 2018, the St. Jude benefits team asked the question:
What’s our why? How can we better align the benefits we offer with our mission?
Driven to deliver equitable healthcare to all St. Jude’s employees, they started to outline a plan to bring an onsite wellness center to their campus. They partnered with Premise Health to build this center, which would become the cornerstone of their Living Well employee wellness program and help to continue positioning St. Jude as an employer of choice.
The Challenge
As a mission-driven organization, St. Jude holds themselves to a high standard for the benefits they deliver employees. This high standard means they need to think big to serve their diverse population, which includes over 6,000 employees, students, clinical fellows, postdoctoral trainees, and faculty members from over 65 countries on their health plan and a total population of approximately 13,000, with dependents. This population includes not only in- person positions on the Memphis campus, but hybrid and fully remote positions as well.
They wanted to design a solution that would:
- Provide a holistic approach in supporting St. Jude’s long-term goal of improving the overall health and wellbeing of employees
- Offer employees convenient access to high- quality healthcare
- Provide a range of services from prevention and screening to treatment of acute and episodic care
- Support employees in better managing chronic conditions, including increasing efforts to
help members stay accountable in taking their medications
- Integrate all resources available to St. Jude employees in one place, including initiatives around wellness, coaching, prevention and condition management, and fitness
- Provide education and support to employees around how to best use their benefits, including where to go to receive care
St. Jude then began its partnership with Premise in 2018 to transform its existing Living Well employee health benefits, wellness program, and fitness center by adding an integrated and scalable healthcare solution that would provide a suite of high-quality services in one convenient location.
Entrance to the St. Jude Living Well Health & Wellness Center
The St. Jude pharmacy
Two years later, the two organizations opened the Living Well Health & Wellness Center and Pharmacy, located in the plaza of the Danny Thomas Research Tower of St. Jude’s Memphis campus. The center was staffed by a dedicated care team trained to provide patient-centered primary care, full-service pharmacy, behavioral health, and chronic condition management, both digitally and in-person. In addition, the St. Jude benefits team revised their member benefits to lower barriers to care and provide unmatched value for their people by:
- Optimizing health benefit offerings through low- cost health center visits and no-premium medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees
- Supporting mental health through onsite appointments, a robust employee assistance program, and telehealth visits
- Establishing the center as a central benefits education hub where members could find additional information and resources
- Maximizing vendor partnerships through an integrated strategy that brought vendors to campus for in-person consultations within the center’s private wellness rooms
- Promoting the space through member engagement campaigns and strategies to ensure the workforce knew what their healthcare benefits were and how to access them
- Continuing to engage with members in providing feedback about the center and the organization’s approach to benefits
Examples of member engagement campaigns with integrated vendor partnerships:
St. Jude success story word cloud of top patient reviews since opening in 2020
The Outcome
Over the course of the next couple of years, the St. Jude team started to see how centering benefits around their mission made a difference for employees and health outcomes.
Increased Engagement with Primary Care
The Living Well Health & Wellness Center, providing convenient virtual and in-person care options, allowed St. Jude to expand healthcare accessibility for its busy workforce. Members who utilized the Living Well Health & Wellness Center were able to schedule same or next day appointments, compared to the national average of 26 days, and waited only 3.2 minutes to be seen on average.
As a result, utilization of the center grew exponentially, with 56% of the employee population having engaged with the health center since its opening.
Improved Chronic Condition Management
For people with chronic and co-morbid conditions, convenient care is essential to keeping up with their health. From 2021 to 2022, the St. Jude wellness center saw a 46% increase in members who chose Premise for their chronic condition management, totaling over 1,000 members. As a result, Premise- attributed members with chronic conditions were more engaged in their care and saw increased adherence to testing guidelines.
More Affordable Medications and High- Touch Pharmacy Support
The Living Well pharmacy also saw increased utilization as attributed members returned to the center for their appointments. In 2021, over 2,000 members took advantage of pharmacy services. The following year, utilization increased by roughly 30% with an additional 500 members filling their prescriptions with the pharmacy. To date, the pharmacy has filled over 40,000 member prescriptions, eighty-five percent of which are cost-effective generic medications, which save money for both members and their employer.
Once members started receiving care from Premise providers, they continued to return. In 2022, just over 1,250 members scheduled two or more appointments through the My Premise Health application.
In 2020, the St. Jude benefits team delivered on their vision to build a world class benefits plan that closely aligned with their mission to provide equitable care for all. The Living Well Health & Wellness Center and Pharmacy brought whole-person care to St. Jude’s population through increased access to high-quality care and integrated their comprehensive employee benefits offerings in one convenient, educational hub. Due in no small part to the benefits team’s foresight regarding their approach to member benefits, St. Jude remains a top employer of choice in the Memphis area.
Today, St. Jude continues to pursue their “why” as they strive to serve their diverse employee population and help them understand and use their benefits.
As the organization grows in the future, the St. Jude benefits team has laid the groundwork needed to help it continue to thrive. This foresight allows its people to focus on what matters: taking care of themselves, as they care for children from across the country and across the world.
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