To understand why membership-based direct primary care facilities offer better primary solutions, it's important to first understand the difference between primary care and specialist/hospital care:

• Primary care is the "home base" or "medical home" for your health care. Your primary care provider is responsible for your overall wellness. Any time you have a health concern, your first visit is to your primary care provider, who knows all of your medical history and can help you make the best decision about your health. With most health issues, your primary care provider can diagnose and heal the problems you're experiencing.
• Specialist and hospital care is for serious, complex illnesses and life-threatening emergencies. If you're severely injured in an accident, for example, an ambulance takes you to the emergency room. Or, if you're diagnosed with cancer, you may need hospital care such as surgery, radiation, or other treatments.

Insurance is an important part of specialist and hospital care. Similar to automobile insurance, our health insurance system was originally designed to pay for rare, unpredictable, and extremely expensive problems. It is essential when patients need emergency care or an operation and chemotherapy treatments, care provided by specialists and hospitals.

In contrast, primary care is frequent, highly predictable, and relatively inexpensive. It doesn't make sense to pay for primary care using a traditional insurance method. Yet, this is exactly how typical medical insurance operates.  It has caused the cost of primary care and the downstream specialist/hospital care to rise considerably and make health care cost-prohibitive for millions of Americans. A direct primary care practice monthly fee plan reduces overhead dramatically, which can extend health care to more Americans.

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Insurance-based primary care v. membership-based primary care

The figure below shows the typical process that occurs in insurance-based care when a patient comes in for possible pneumonia. The red boxes indicate insurance processing, the yellow boxes are tasks completed by the patient, and the blue boxes show the actions of the health care provider. (Click to make it larger.)

Compare the complex process shown in the figure above with the simple process below. The figure below shows how simple the same pneumonia visit is with Direcy Primary Care. The cost and complexity of the health care event are dramatically reduced. (Click to make it larger.)

It's easy to see how much more efficient the direct primary care practice is for a typical primary care visit. This efficiency means lower costs, doctors spending time with patients instead of insurance forms.

Healthier patients

Direct primary care enables doctors and nurses to provide better care for patients. Unlimited visits and a smaller patient pool mean patients get more time with providers. Without unnecessary co-pays and referrals there is greater continuity of care, which means better, more informed decisions about a patient’s health.

Happier providers

Primary care has been a victim of the health care crisis.

Family health practices across the nation are closing because they can't stay financially afloat. Even hospitals that expect their primary care clinics to lose money are shutting down due to financial pressures.

Whereas 50 percent of medical students once chose primary care as a profession, that percentage is now in the single digits. This migration is fueled by growing dissatisfaction with the insurance-laden business models in primary care that make specialization options more attractive due less paperwork and increased income.

The result? The average office visit “face time” is now seven minutes and rarely longer than 15 minutes.  In order to see the 25-35 patients in person per day required to sustain a traditional clinical practice, providers must manage between 2,500 and 3,500 regular patients.  In contrast, a busy day for a direct primary provider contains about half the number of patients, providing doctors ample time to examine patients and explore diagnosis and treatment options, preferences, concerns and fears.  Additionally, providers are not tied to insurance reimbursement requirements of in-person visits so they can be flexible and offer phone and/or email consultations if it’s more convenient for the patient and appropriate to the kind of care needed. 

Providers report increased satisfaction and renewed commitment to provide the kind of care that initially inspired them to dedicate their lives to medicine. In short, direct primary care facilities enable physicians and nurses to do what they felt called to do: treat patients.  

 The bottom line: Doctors and nurses have less burden and are free to focus on patients, not paperwork.

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