A new year brings new health care options for Lowndes County and Columbus Light and Water employees.

Monday, during its last meeting of 2019, the county’s board of supervisors unanimously approved a contract with Allegro Family Clinics to provide clinic services, including testing and pharmacy. CLW’s board of directors approved an agreement with Allegro for clinic services at its December board meeting.

The new agreement will replace a similar arrangement with Baptist Medical Group, which had provided those services at its Fifth Street North clinic since 2017.

The supervisors had been looking for a new clinic services provider since last fall, when the city of Columbus terminated its contract with BMG as the city sought to correct an $800,000 budget deficit in August.

The clinic arrangement BMG offered was contingent upon all three entities — the county, city and CLW — participating. Under that contract, the clinic’s fees were based on the number of eligible employees. The loss of 472 eligible city employee/dependents made the plan unfeasible to continue, board of supervisors president Harry Sanders said. The county has about 300 eligible employees/dependent while CLW has 80.

“Once the city pulled out, (BMG) just keep the rates down low enough to make it work,” Sanders said. “Now, it looks like we have a deal with Allegro that will work for our employees and might even save the county some money.”

County Administrator Ralph Billingsley said the agreement with Allegro is very similar to the one it replaces.

“Employees still won’t have co-pay for clinic visits and there still won’t be a co-pay for the most common drugs,” he said. “There’s a list of 90 drugs on the list that don’t have a co-pay.”

Billingsley said the Allegro has discounted lab services by 33 percent for any lab/tests done at its clinics.

The biggest difference, Billingsley said is how the county will be billed.

“Under the (BMG) plan, we paid based on the number of people we have eligible,” he said. “It was a flat fee per month for each employee whether they ever went to the clinic or not. With this plan, we’ll only pay when an employee actually goes to the clinic. The county is self-insured. In this situation, the employee’s cost for the clinic visit, the co-pay, is waived and the balance is billed to the county.”

Billingsley said how the costs of the new plan will compare to that of BMG is difficult to predict.

“Some years, we might come out a little better, some years a little worse,” Billingsley said. “It all depends on how many of our employees need those services in any given year.”

Allegro offers one advantage BMG could not match, Sanders said.

“(BMG) had one clinic, but Allegro has five,” Sanders said. “It’s the same deal with pharmacy. Baptist had one pharmacy you had to use but Allegro has six. That’s going to make it a lot more convenient for the employees.”

Billingsley said employees may be able to start using the clinic as soon as next week. Until then, the county’s arrangement for those services will continue until Jan. 15.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

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