By Gary Nelson
The Arizona Republic
Mesa is about to get into the health-care business.
Looking to cut soaring employee health costs, the city plans to hire its own doctors and open a clinic before the end of the year.
It’s not entirely a new idea, even in the Valley. Goodyear operates a clinic for its workers, Chandler is looking into it and Peoria considered one last year before the City Council, skittish over budget problems, nixed the proposal.
Maricopa County, meanwhile, partnered with a widely known doctor, Andrew Weil of the University of Arizona, to set up a clinic that serves partly as a health-care option for county employees and partly as a research center on the benefits of interdisciplinary medicine.
But what Mesa has in mind appears to go beyond what other Valley cities have contemplated.
Gary Manning, Mesa’s human-resources director, told the City Council recently that the last thing he wants is a “doc-in-the-box,” where employees are churned in and out as quickly as possible.
