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WorXsiteHR Is Rethinking Workforce Healthcare
31 Jul 2026
How One Company Turned a Systemic Problem Into a Practical Solution
Most people think healthcare starts with insurance.
John Zabasky and co-founding partner, Sharon Rowell, believe it starts somewhere else.
“It starts with whether someone can actually see a doctor,” Zabasky says. “Coverage is important, but coverage alone doesn’t solve the problem.”
That idea has shaped both their careers. As CEO and President respectively of WorXsiteHR Insurance Solutions, they have spent years studying how employee benefits work in the real world, especially for hourly workers in industries where traditional healthcare plans often fall short.
The goal has never been to make healthcare more complicated. It has been to make it easier to use.
From Student of History to Builder of Systems
Zabasky grew up in Burtonsville, Maryland, in a family that valued hard work, education, and public service. His father and grandfather were career firefighters in Washington, D.C., while his mother and grandmother raised him and his sister.
As a young man, he excelled at baseball and dreamed of taking the sport further until a serious injury changed his plans.
That unexpected turn pushed him toward another lifelong interest.
“My Great Aunt gave me a love for history,” he says. “She taught me that if you understand how systems developed, you can usually understand why they succeed or fail.”
He earned both a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in History from UMBC before expanding his education with an MBA from Pepperdine University, a PhD in Information Systems from Concordia, and currently, a second PhD in Health Sciences from Liberty University.
It’s been at Liberty where he could begin to see all of those disciplines working together.
“History teaches patterns. Business teaches execution. Information systems teach structure. Healthcare brings all of those lessons into people’s everyday lives.”
Building Healthcare Around Real Workers
As the company grew, one pattern kept appearing.
Workers in quick-service restaurants, hospitality, truck stops, agriculture, and other high-turnover industries often had healthcare benefits on paper but struggled to use them.
Some could not afford deductibles. Others could not miss a shift. Many simply found traditional insurance too confusing.
“I remember talking with a restaurant employee who had been carrying an insurance card for nearly a year,” Zabasky recalls. “When I asked if he had seen a doctor, he said, ‘Honestly, I didn’t know where to start.’ That wasn’t a medical problem. It was a system problem.”
Those conversations inspired a different approach.
Zabasky’s background in History and Political Economy drove him to look closely at both socialized medicine and single-payer systems. Those two models have dominated the universal healthcare literature, yet failed to provide a solution. So Zabasky, together with Rowell, began to create another model. What emerged in 2013 was the foundation for HealthWorX, a nonprofit–third party administrator (TPA) partnership as a market-based governance model capable of expanding no-cost primary care within the existing employer-sponsored healthcare framework.
Why the Nonprofit-TPA Model Matters
Zabasky and Rowell believe the future of workforce healthcare depends on turning coverage into care.
Their answer is a nonprofit-supported, third-party administrator model that combines community-focused funding with disciplined operational management.
“The nonprofit side builds trust and helps remove financial barriers,” Zabasky explains. “The TPA side handles enrollment, compliance, reporting, provider coordination, and member support. One creates the promise. The other delivers it.”
Instead of measuring success by enrollment alone, Zabasky believes employers should ask different questions.
Are workers actually seeing doctors?
Are they filling prescriptions?
Has absenteeism improved?
Has turnover decreased?
“If workers trust the benefit, managers understand it, and employers can measure it, then you’ve built something that solves a real problem.”
Leadership Through Process
Insurance and healthcare are highly regulated industries where small mistakes can create large consequences.
That is why Zabasky’s leadership style emphasizes structure over shortcuts.
He believes administration is one of the most overlooked parts of healthcare.
“People think administration happens behind the scenes,” he says. “I see it as the engine that creates trust. When enrollment is simple, questions get answered quickly, and care is easy to access, people actually use the benefit.”
His focus has always been on creating repeatable systems instead of one-time successes.
Looking Ahead
The workforce continues to change.
More companies rely on hourly employees. More workers balance changing schedules and multiple jobs. Traditional benefits were not designed for many of those realities.
Zabasky and Rowell believe healthcare must adapt.
“The future isn’t about handing someone another insurance card,” he says. “It’s about building a system that works on a Tuesday afternoon between shifts, when someone needs care and can’t afford confusion.”
That philosophy continues to guide their work.
Rather than chasing bigger healthcare systems, Zabasky and Rowell have focused on building HealthWorX — a system that is practical, measurable, and designed around the people who need it most.
