Weber State University students now have access to more medical services at a lower cost to the university, according to university records of student fees.
Weber has saved over $100,000 in student fee money spent on student healthcare services each year since the school entered its partnership with the Professional Center North Ogden Clinic (PCN), located at 4650 Harrison Blvd, in 2023.
Student healthcare services cover WSU students’ basic healthcare needs regardless of whether they have insurance.
Last year, Mariela Henderson, a Weber student, discovered that her student fees entitled her to free services through PCN Ogden Clinic.
“At first it was a really stressful situation because I wasn’t feeling well and I thought I’d have to spend a lot of money,” Henderson said. “The staff told me that I have insurance as a student, so that was a huge relief to hear.”
Henderson explained that PCN Ogden Clinic was the most convenient and natural choice, as there is a clinic a block away from University Village.
She visited PCN twice for the same issue and was only billed for the medications prescribed to her. Henderson added that despite both of her visits being walk-ins, she spent minimal time waiting to see a provider.
Student healthcare: More for less
In 2023, Weber closed the Student Health Center due to a lack of use. In its place, PCN took over as WSU’s primary student healthcare provider.
While the transition was initially met with skepticism from the student body, the administration insisted that the partnership would save the school money and expand the suite of services made available to students through their student fees.
“When we changed to a different model of delivering healthcare, we knew that there would be bumps in the road,” said Rochelle Bronson, WSU’s student health and wellness program administrator. “A lot of the first year was troubleshooting those concerns.”
Bronson reflected on how PCN Ogden Clinic worked together with the university to expand the services available to students. The contract was updated to specify the lab tests and medical services that were available to students under their student health insurance, including STD, blood and urine tests.
“We went from 12 tests that we could offer on campus to about 135 tests that we can do at Ogden Clinic,” Bronson said.
Additionally, the amendment clarified that PCN must provide ambulatory care to students without cost. This means student insurance covers visits for health concerns that don’t require hospitalization or an overnight stay.
“When we outsourced, it was just hard to know what to ask for,” Bronson said. “We wanted to be able to give students their basic healthcare needs and roughly approximate what we had done on campus so that students weren’t getting anything less and were hopefully getting more out of it.”
In addition to being able to offer a broader range of services to students through the partnership, Bronson explained that eliminating the brick-and-mortar costs of operating the Student Health Center drastically reduced the cost of providing student healthcare.
“Through the Ogden Clinic, we’re providing students with more value with less student fee money going out the door,” Bronson said.
Outsourcing is saving money
Joe Elggren, practice manager at the Ogden Clinic located on Harrison Boulevard, helps manage the partnership between Weber State and PCN.
Elggren explained that WSU used to pay to maintain the whole Student Health Center, but now, the university only pays for PCN Ogden Clinic’s staff and facility through a flat rate per visit outlined in the medical service agreement.
The medical service agreement between WSU and PCN states that the school pays a $170 flat rate per eligible student visit, which has proven to be a more cost-effective model for the university than sustaining an on-campus student clinic.
“Our passion is making sure that people are taken care of,” Elggren said. “The fact that we can partner with an incredible institution like Weber State University is extremely exciting to us and we feel like it’s a win-win for both sides.”
According to a cumulative year-over-year report on student healthcare usage provided by the university, the number of unique patients being serviced has demonstrated an upward trend in the two years since the school partnered with PCN Ogden Clinic.
Tracking these trends has been tricky. The Student Health Center counted individual labs ordered and procedures done as individual visits instead of counting the visits themselves, according to Bronson. She suggests that these may have led to an inflation of the reported number of visits during the years that the Student Health Center operated.
A potential lack of awareness
With a wider assortment of medical services available to students and an overall positive impression of the care that students receive at the clinic, one weak point is a general lack of awareness among the student body regarding their student healthcare benefits.
The results of a survey measuring student feedback on their experiences at PCN Ogden Clinic done in 2024 by WSU Student Health and Wellness suggested that students had positive experiences with the providers they’ve seen at the clinic.
However, on a question concerning whether or not the provider explained to the student which services were covered and which weren’t, just under half of the respondents indicated that they disagreed to some degree that the provider had fulfilled that function.
According to the results of a survey of Weber students done for this article through the school’s community Snapchat page, only 20% of respondents out of the 125 who responded said that they were aware of their student healthcare benefits.
“I think that students should take advantage of this benefit because health insurance can get pretty expensive,” Henderson said. “It’s cool that the school provides student health insurance because I didn’t even know that was something I had.”
