City workers could some day go to a city-sponsored medical clinic for health care under a proposed plan to be considered Monday by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen.

The board Monday will discuss a contract to establish a clinic for city employees and their families covered under the city’s self-insured health care program.

The city would form a partnership with the Southern Health Network to provide a nurse practitioner, a health and wellness plan, and a nurse navigator who will follow members and work with members and their physicians to improve health care.

Part of the program’s goal is to reduce acute medical conditions for patients and allow employees and their families to get medical care without having to pay a co-pay under the city’s insurance plan

“This could serve as a model for this area,” Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said.

He said the program will cost the city $37,000 a month, “but if after the first six months there are no savings (in medical costs) we won’t have to pay anything until savings are shown.”

The board in March authorized City Attorney Nancy Thomas to begin negotiations with a partnership of Southern Health Network, Medical Analysis and Merit Health River Region Medical Center. Flaggs said Merit Health and Medical Analysis, which oversees similar clinics for cities on the coast, will still be a part of the program.

“But this will be bigger, because it will include the entire medical community,” he said.

If approved, the proposed medical clinic would be located at One Medical Plaza adjacent to Merit Health River Region West on North Frontage Road.

The board initially began examining an in-house clinic in 2015 as a way to save on medical costs by having a central location where employees and their families could get help if they were sick, and to do the city’s drug testing programs for employees. Similar programs have been in place on the coast for several years, and the cities using them have reported saving money on medical costs.