Last month, Maxar opened a new direct primary care clinic in Sunnyvale, California, which will provide near-site healthcare services for our employees in our Palo Alto, San Jose and Mountain View offices. The clinic, which will be operated by Everside Health, a direct primary care partner, represents another major step forward in our direct primary care journey and our commitment to providing improved healthcare access and affordability to our employees.
Maxar’s Benefits Director Lindsey Cushman and Benefits Manager Jennifer Ross, as well as on-site physician Dr. Yoga Sundararajan, led a ribbon-cutting ceremony in mid-December 2022 to formally open the new clinic in Sunnyvale, California.
Direct primary care (DPC) is an emerging corporate healthcare model where a company offers employees unrestricted access to primary care physician and a defined set of wellness and care services for a fixed monthly charge. Normal office visits and preventive care are free, and fees for many other types of care, including lab and specialist services, are either waived or reduced. DPC is meant to serve as a more accessible, affordable primary and emergency care approach, and while these plans do not fully replace typical health insurance plans, employees can pay for a significantly cheaper level of insurance to cover services not included in the plan.
Maxar was one of the earliest advocates for DPC, as the model aligns closely with our belief in building an innovative benefits program that supports the whole person, meeting our employees where they are. Starting in the mid-2010s, we received employee feedback that they wanted more flexibility in access and cost for their primary care providers.
In 2015, Maxar conducted a pilot program with approximately 200 team members in Colorado to determine if a DPC approach could help remove traditional barriers to improved health. Our team implemented an on-site clinic at Maxar’s Westminster office to allow employees the convenience of seeing their doctor easily and quickly at work. At the end of the pilot program, case study participants had 4.7% lower health risk scores than the rest of our employee population, their claims costs were 22% lower and their satisfaction had improved, with 90% of patients reporting positive experiences compared to their previous care options.
The pilot program also diverted roughly $220,000 in claims costs, which covered the cost of Maxar’s upfront investment more than twice over, making our decision to shift toward a DPC model a no-brainer. It’s better for our people and for our company.
Since then, Maxar has gone full steam ahead with DPC, while still providing employees with traditional healthcare insurance options if preferred. In addition to our new clinic in the Bay Area, we provide DPC access to colleagues in Colorado and Virginia and plan to expand these benefits to employees in other markets. We’ve also advocated for legislative action to make it easier to implement DPC in states like Colorado.
At Maxar, we’re on a mission to unlock the promise of space to build a better world. Achieving that mission requires that our people are happy, healthy and ready to bring their best selves to work. Preventive care is a critical part of that equation. Through our experiences with DPC, we’ve seen that making preventive care accessible and affordable delivers better outcomes for our colleagues and our business.