Direct access primary care offers small businesses a creative alternative to high cost traditional health insurance premiums. The right combination of a health savings account (HSA), high deductible insurance plan, and a direct access primary care membership can bring savings and higher quality care over traditional plans.
If you’re tired of working in factory medicine, then DPC may be right for you. What is factory medicine, you ask? It’s seeing 25-40 patients a day with no breaks for eating, going to the bathroom or thinking. I remember pulling into the parking lot of the office where I used to work and sitting in my car dreading going in. I loved my staff and I loved my patients. I hated the pace and the company culture. I’m a person that likes to be busy but having 3 minutes to spend with a post-hospital patient on 20 medications and no discharge instructions is not my idea of a good time. It’s hard to develop a relationship when the only thing you have time to focus on is teaching them to not mix medications that would kill them. Sad but true.
Why is the system so broken? In my opinion, I think it’s the invasion of the insurance companies into the provider-patient relationship. In addition, the low reimbursement and denials by the insurance companies create a revenue gap that requires clinicians to see more patients to generate more revenue. The cost of billing insurance is reported to be 0.35-0.40 on every dollar. 35%-40% of every dollar used to bill insurance? Talk about driving up healthcare costs!! A great analogy that Josh Umbehr, DPC advocate and DPC clinic owner (Atlas.MD) uses is that your car and homeowner’s insurance don’t pay when you need new paint or your air conditioner stops working so why does health insurance pay for primary care? Approximately 80% of healthcare claims are generated in primary care.
Can you imagine the cost saving if insurance got completely out of primary care? We would be back at having insurance for the big things like surgeries, accidents, and catastrophic illnesses. If a person could pay $600-$1200 for unlimited access to primary care with no co-pays and discounts on labs, medications and radiology paired with a lower cost catastrophic policy so much money would be saved.
So why doesn’t everyone participating in DPC, you ask? That’s a great question. Distrust in the medical establishment? No access to DPC? The mindset that “I pay for insurance so I’m going to us it”? Really? People pay for car insurance but people don't run into a tree to get a new paint job. No one sets their house on fire when the roof needs to be replaced. In our market, we have found that people don’t believe that what we offer is true. They can’t believe that we can stay in business offering wholesale pricing on meds and labs. No copays? Only $50 per month? No way! Fortunately, it does work. Actually, it works fantastically. I love seeing a person as often as needed at no extra cost to them. They have a sinus infection and need a z-pak? It cost $1.60. That’s it. You don’t want to use my wholesale pharmacy? No problem. I’ll send it to the pharmacy of your choice where you can get it for $25 through your insurance company. Makes sense, right?
Researchers at the University of Colorado and the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge discovered in a study of 49 adults that when participants consumed the equivalent of two espresso’s worth of caffeine three hours prior to their habitual bed time, peak melatonin levels were delayed by 40 minutes.
"No taxation without representation" was the slogan that fueled the revolution that formed our republic. Looking through that lens, how would those colonists view our current health care situation. A situation where we are forced to purchase health insurance from an insurance company that doesn't represent our interests. Whether you're a fan or not, you would have to agree that health insurance companies do not have our best interests as their top priority.
What we need is a health care revolution. Direct access primary care could begin that revolution. In much the same way that the idea of self government transformed the group of colonist into a nation by removing the ruling class we could revolutionize health care by removing the insurance company from between the provider and the patient.
At Celebrate Primary Care you are a member so you come first. That means your care is tailored to fit you instead of being filtered through the rules of an insurance company. Check out the FAQ page to find out more about how it works or enroll today.
It is estimated that over 80% of people are deficient. Low vitamin D is associated with increased risk of cancer, osteoporosis and heart disease. The most important function of vitamin D is in regulating the immune system. Adequate vitamin D is associated with a decreased risk of both bacterial and viral infections.
Being a primary care provider often I end up in casual conversations about health issues with friends and acquaintances. I don't mind this at all. In fact I enjoy offering help to people navigating the medical matrix. Commonly when the subject of lab results come up I usually hear that they came back as "normal." Unfortunately, the normal value determined by the lab may not be appropriate.
