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More Patients Turning to 'Direct Primary Care'
The free market does a better job than government run healthcare, government funded healthcare, and insurance funded health care. And at a fraction of the price of those models.
Obamacare is forcing a lot of doctors to either retire, or consider a direct primary care model.
Having quick access to a primary care doctor 24/7 is very appealing to Mick Lowderman, 56, who is married with two children, ages 10 and 8. He pays a monthly membership fee to AtlasMD, a direct primary care practice in Wichita, KS.“It’s awesome that I can call or text Dr. Josh Umbehr when my children are sick and that I have a solution before they leave for school,” he says.
For example, when one child woke up coughing recently, Mick and his wife, Jennifer, contacted ‘Dr. Josh,’ who asked them to put her on the phone to hear her cough and then take a picture of her throat and text it to him.
“He prescribed an antibiotic, which we picked up at his office the same day.”
Umbehr is part of a growing movement of primary care doctors, including those in family, internal, and geriatric medicine, who want to practice more personalized comprehensive medicine without the burden of dealing with insurance in a traditional fee-for-service system. Most choose to not accept health insurance and charge patients a membership fee instead.
“When you look at direct primary care and other models that are cropping up, it points to our broken system that doctors don’t want to practice in and are looking for alternate solutions -- and so are patients,“ says Erin Sullivan, PhD, research and curriculum director at the Center for Primary Care at Harvard Medical School.
Primary care is built on the long-term relationship between clinicians and patients. A 10- to 15-minute patient visit doesn’t support that relationship, Sullivan says.
When Kevin Boyd, 64, fell on his stairs in Wichita and broke three ribs, he didn’t go the emergency room. Instead, he called Umbehr, who told him to come to his office. He referred Boyd nearby for an X-ray and dispensed pain medications at his office. The total cost was $70.
In contrast, the first time Boyd fell and broke his ribs, he had Blue Cross Blue Shield and drove himself to the ER, where he saw the ER doctor, a radiologist for an MRI, and got shots for his pain. The total bill was $14,000, and he paid $2,600.
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Originally Posted by Peter1469
