After briefly implementing a health care plan that was met with opposition by the local teachers’ union, Mason City Schools recently announced it would be returning its employees to the previous preferred provider organization network as of March 1.

Superintendent Gail Kist-Kline said district officials believe TrueCost — a health care plan that pays providers Medicare, plus 40 percent — is “an innovative idea whose time has come,” but were disappointed with how the process played out with area providers.

Employee healthcare is about 15 percent of Mason schools’ $101 million budget for general fund expenditures.

Of the district’s 1,300 employees, 969 elected to enroll in the same plan.

The district made many budget-cutting decisions during the past couple of years, Kist-Kline said, including the elimination of 130 jobs, closing an elementary school and consolidating bus stops

“This was another way we were trying to reduce costs,” she said.

While the plan was introduced to the Cincinnati area more than year ago, area providers began treating the insurance coverage differently in January.

Some Mason employees experienced difficulties with their doctors and at the hospital, according to Karrie Strickland, president of Mason Education Association, which represents 640 teachers in the district.

That led MEA to file a class action grievance, which claimed that the negotiated agreement between the Mason City Schools Board of Education and MEA had been violated. The contract does not allow the board to make unilateral changes in healthcare, and requires a vote by the membership for modifications in healthcare coverage and program design, said Strickland, who is part of the district’s health care committee.

“We had a lot of discussion over it and we’re extremely happy over the fact that we ended up as a group determining that we just had to go back to what we had before,” she said. “We knew we needed to get our members the care they needed so we have switched back, but we’ll continue to meet and try to come up with ways to control our costs in that area.”

Treasurer Richard Gardner said Mason schools was unprepared for the backlash it received from some local hospitals and doctors’ offices. He said it was never the district’s intention for employees to experience disruptions in seeing their physicians.