Intermountain Health now managing the USU Student Health and Wellness Center
After months of research, discussion and planning, Intermountain Health took over managing
Utah State University’s Student Health and Wellness Center on July 1. The university made the
official announcement on May 1.
Utah State University’s Student Health and Wellness Center on July 1. The university made the
official announcement on May 1.
Any registered USU student will continue to have access to the health center, just as they did in
the past, as its cost remains a part of tuition.
In a Zoom interview, USU Executive Vice President and chief operational officer Robert Wagner
said in September 2022, former university president Noelle Cockett asked him to do a deep
review into the state of the Student Health and Wellness Center.
“We thought it would be a good time to just really take a deep dive into the center,” Wagner
said. “And really start asking ourselves just some fundamental questions like, ‘Is the center still
serving students well? Is it accomplishing the goals and objectives that USU has?’”
The three focuses within the review were scope of care, quality of care and financial viability.
Wagner said there was no end goal when starting this review and there was no plan already in
place to replace management.
As the review continued, the committee put in place to review the center decided to explore
alternative options for running it.
“As we began looking at considering this idea of contracting out, we thought, ‘Well, let’s do this
officially. We’re a public institution; there’s a correct way of doing this,’” Wagner said. “We
decided to work closely with our purchasing department, and we developed a request for
proposals that laid out if we were to contract out, this is what we would want it to look like;
again, focusing on scope of care, quality of care and financial viability.”
The request for proposals was issued during the break between fall semester 2022 and spring
semester 2023. During the beginning of spring semester, the proposals submitted by third–party
entities were examined, and university officials met with representatives from the companies.
“As we dug in deeper and closer, we began to realize that the idea of contracting out to this third
party would make real good sense for our students,” Wagner said. “It would bring options and a
type of quality of care and scope of care that our students just haven’t had.”
According to Wagner, the decision for Intermountain Health to take over running the center
came at the beginning of April.
Bringing in a third–party company that specializes in health care brings a few benefits to the
center and to the students of USU. Intermountain Health will be able to connect students with
healthcare services outside of the university that the center itself isn’t able to provide.
center and to the students of USU. Intermountain Health will be able to connect students with
healthcare services outside of the university that the center itself isn’t able to provide.
“By bringing a medical provider in — an organization that focuses on health care — we
understand and know that they have a lot of resources that they can make available to our
students that as an institution, we just couldn’t,” Wagner said. “For example, Intermountain
Health is going to make after–hours telehealth available to our students.”
When the change in management came about, Wagner said they made sure all of the staff at
the center were offered a job under the new management. He said they didn’t want anyone to
lose their jobs because of the change.
“Some of the other things that we put into the request for proposals to make sure is, number
one, we didn’t want this to cost more for students,” Wagner said. “And number two, we didn’t
want them to have to go someplace else. We take great pride in the fact that we have a student
health and wellness center on our campus that’s close by for our students.”
Students can make appointments online, and the center also accepts walk–ins if necessary.
Wagner said they will be monitoring the operations of the center and the care it provides to
make sure it is accomplishing everything they want it to.
“This is something we’re going to watch very carefully as we go in, especially this first year, to
make sure that students’ needs are being met. Again, we take it very, very seriously — I take it
seriously that student tuition is paying for this,” Wagner said. “Students are number one here,
and we need to make sure that their needs are being met.”