Direct primary care

In the USA Direct Primary Care (DPC) is primary care offered direct to the consumer, without insurance intervention. It is an umbrella term which incorporates various health care delivery systems that involve direct financial relationships between patients and health care providers.

One niche variant of direct primary care is concierge medicine.

Direct primary care can remove many of the financial barriers to accessing care when needed. Often, there are no insurance co-pays, deductibles or co-insurance fees thus avoiding the overhead and complexity of maintaining relationships with insurers.

Under this model, patients may pay a combination of visit fees and/or fixed monthly fees which grant them access to a set of medical services, including same and next-day appointments, both in the form of house-calls and office visits.

Typically a DPC arrangement benefits from pairing with either:

• A high-deductible health plan, as DPC alone will not cover catastrophic health care such as most surgeries

• A health savings account, or health reimbursement account as the associated tax-benefits can generally be applied to DPC and other medical expenses.

Advantages

Direct primary care practices do not typically accept insurance payments, thus avoiding the overhead and complexity of maintaining relationships with insurers, which can consume as much as $0.40 of each medical dollar spent.^{[citation needed]}

Because direct primary care payments are typically paid over time, rather than in return for specific services, the economic incentives are such that the long-term health of the patient is the most lucrative situation for the doctor. As such, preventative care gains greater emphasis under DPC.

Because the primary care physician is better compensated than they would be under insurance billing, they can afford to spend more time with the patient, rather than simply referring them to a highly-paid specialist after a short consultation.

Examples

• Hello Health (Brooklyn, NY)^[1]
• MedLion (Monterey, CA)^[2]
• Organic Medicine Now (Charleston, SC)^[3]
• Qliance Medical Group (Seattle, WA)^[4]
• San Francisco On Call Medical Group (San Francisco, CA) - no monthly fee, rather charge flat cash fees per visit^{[citation needed]}
• Direct Care Group

See also

• Concierge medicine
• Consumer driven health care
• Health care in the United States
• Primary Care

External links

• "Direct Medical Practice - The Uninsured Solution to the Primary Medical Care Mess" with Dr. Garrison Bliss (Qliance Medical Group of WA).
• Who Killed Marcus Welby? from Seattle's The Stranger, 1/23/2008
• The Most Important Organization In Silicon Valley That No One Has Heard About MedLion profile from TechCrunch, 6/19/2011
• How direct primary care reduces primary care costs Interview with Brian Forrest, MD from KevinMD, 7/17/2011

References

1. ^ Callahan, Maureen (2009-04-07). "Doc This Way!: Tech-Savvy Patients and Pros Work Up Healthcare 2.0". New York Post. http://www.nypost.com/seven/04072009/entertainment/health/doc_this_way__163218.htm?page=0. 
2. ^ "Silicon Valley's Most Important Organization". TechCrunch. 2011-06-19. http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/19/the-most-important-organization-in-silicon-valley-that-no-one-has-heard-about/. 
3. ^ "RIP Marcus Welby, MD". Huffington Post. 2011-10-05. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-chase/rip-marcus-welby-md_b_994445.html. 
4. ^ "Direct Primary Care: A New Brew in Seattle". Harvard Medical School - WebWeekly. 2008-03-03. http://webweekly.hms.harvard.edu/archive/2008/0303/student_scene.html.