Co-pay hike slashes ER visits

Emergency-room visits by municipal workers plunged 18.5 percent in the first quarter of fiscal 2017 compared with the same period last year, after the city tripled the co-pay from $50 to $150, officials said.

The decline of nearly 5,200 ER visits — from 28,108 to 22,913 — generated $9.2 million in savings for the city in one quarter.

The use of other high-cost medical services — such as specialty care, physical therapy and radiology — also trended “significantly lower than projected” after those co-pay fees, too, were raised on July 1.

The precise total savings won’t be known until later this month, according to a status update from the Office of Labor Relations to Mayor de Blasio.

“Initial reports . . . confirm that our health-care plans are demonstrating significant changes in [medical] utilization patterns that are attributable to the plan changes,” reads the Dec. 22 update, which was recently posted online.

The co-pay increases started in July after a city review found that too many municipal workers were relying on emergency care and other high-cost medi- cal treatment rather than on primary and preventative care.

The cost-cutting measures are part of a 2014 agreement with the Municipal Labor Council to cut $3.4 billion in health-care costs by the end of fiscal 2018.

Thus far, the plan has sparked criticism from the City Council — particularly because hundreds of millions of dollars in savings were claimed by relying on inflated projections for health-care premiums.

In February, City Hall also irked members of the council by quietly plugging a $58 million shortfall in the projected savings using money from a health-stabilization fund that’s intended for other purposes.

Officials said that new wellness programs for municipal workers have sparked more than 10,000 free flu vaccinations and spurred more than 13,000 employees to enroll in Weight Watchers programs.

Smoking-cessation and antihypertension programs are in the works, as well.

About 75 percent of the city’s 300,000 municipal workers are covered under the health-care savings plan.