Employer Healthcare

Employee Health Benefits, Make It Happen!

Finding a healthcare solution for your employees can be incredibly frustrating, and as a small business owner, you are often put into an impossible situation.

You can either:

Provide healthcare at a ridiculous cost
Provide nothing and let they employees get their own healthcare insurance
Either way, you risk profit or losing your best employees to companies that will.

It’s a dilemma small business owners face every day – I know, I talk to them every day. They want to do something for their employees, but the crush of health insurance is too much to bear, both mentally and financially.

That’s until they find out about a Balanced Physician Care healthcare solution.

Our solution helps you regain control of your health benefits and healthcare costs, all while providing you options that make your healthcare decisions easier, both mentally and financially.

Direct Primary Care is the foundation

Direct Primary Care (similar to concierge medicine, but much more affordable), is an approach to healthcare where patients and businesses work directly with a primary care doctor without any interference from insurance companies.

It restores the personal touch once considered the foundation of the doctor-patient relationship while incorporating the best in healthcare, particularly wellness and preventative medicine.

It provides businesses, big and small:

  • Price Transparency
  • Durable cost control
  • Out-of-pocket savings for employees
  • A superior employee experience with health benefits
  • Ease of implementation

Balanced Physician Care Health Benefits Solution can:

  • Save your business money
  • Reduce absenteeism and presenteeism
  • Provide convenient access to quality care
  • Help YOU retain your best employees
  • Boost employee engagement and morale
  • Heighten job satisfaction

The Takeaway:  You can now provide and control the Cost, Quality and Convenience of your health benefits. And it’s super easy to make happen!

Give us a call at 1-833-HEAL JAX or 904-930-4774 and we will setup a free, no obligation analysis of your current, or future health benefits program.

We now have Two Membership Options starting as low as $69 per month!

To your health,

Balanced Physician Care

Running

Spring Clean Your Fitness Routine

written by Claire Watson-Irving, NASM

Monday was the first day of spring and thoughts of spring cleaning may be on your mind.

In addition to sprucing up your home for the upcoming warm weather, it might be even more important to take some to time to spruce up your fitness routine and renew your motivation by trying new exercises, breaking out of the old routine and exercising outdoors before it gets too hot!

Here are my top ten tips to spring clean your fitness routine:

1. Reframe exercise as self-care

When you’re busy taking care of everyone else at home or work, exercise is often the first thing to be sacrificed. Think of it as way to improve your ability to cope with the demands of daily life; helping to improve quality of sleep, your ability to manage stress and feel sufficiently energized to deal with life’s daily demands.

2.  Set SMART goals

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. Don’t set yourself up for failure. If your goals are too big you’ll get frustrated and give up exercising. Be realistic about how much activity you can do during any given week, and how long you can exercise for at any given time.

3. Get a workout buddy

You’re more likely to meet your fitness goals if you have someone you’re accountable to and who gives you the support you need, especially when you’re feeling like reaching for the Pinot rather than the gym shoes. Schedule time with a trainer, friend or family member to avoid slouching on the couch.

4. Change your thinking

Instead of focusing on physical goals like building muscle and weight loss, concentrate on how exercise makes you feel. The mood benefits of exercise are instant whereas physical change can take months, or even years to achieve. Note how you feel before and after exercising to maintain motivation. Compare your mindsets. Try exercising outdoors to intensify the endorphin effect.

5. Reward yourself

Don't forget to reward your body and take care of the ultimate machine. A massage is a great way to improve posture and joint flexibility by ironing out kinks in muscle fibers and is something pleasurable to look forward to. A foam roller or a tennis ball has a similar effect. Or try acupuncture for the ultimate therapeutic way to feel renewed.

6. Try something new

Whatever your goal, your body adapts to an exercise after just four weeks and it stops being effective. Change things up to get consistent results. Vary reps, weight, tempo, difficulty, equipment, time and type of exercise to add variety and keep your body on its’ toes.

7. Resistance train.

Many women take up running, yoga or pilates to improve fitness, but forget how important lifting weight is to maintain bone and muscle mass, which decline from the age of 30. Resistance training helps ward off degenerative diseases such as osteoporosis. Use lighter weights with high reps and you’ll look more like Kate Middleton than Arnie.

8. Sign up for a community event

Add a goal that helps focus your fitness routine by creating a sense of purpose. Signing up for a cause related race close to your heart renews commitment to exercise and offers something different from the usual routine.

9. Splurge on nice exercise gear

Ditch the washed out T shirt from ten years ago. Replace exercise gear about every six months, especially sports bras. Moisture wicking materials are a must in Jacksonville. Wear brands that reflect your style and values and you’ll be more motivated to work out and feel good in your skin whilst you’re doing it.

10. Exercise for you, not someone else

Every week there’s a new exercise fad or trend that comes to the market, it’s easy to jump on the band wagon and do something because it’s in vogue. Chose an exercise routine you genuinely enjoy, that works with where you’re at and you’ll be much more likely to do it habitually. If you like shaking your stuff in a sparkly Zumba skirt or going old school Cardio Stepping rather than Barre or PiYo, so be it.

 

Claire Watson-Irving is a certified Personal Trainer and certified Health & Wellness Coach and can be booked for sessions at Balanced Physician Care (115 Professional Drive STE 104, Ponte Vedra, FL32082).  For more information, please call 914-409-6554 or email irvingmotionislotion@gmail.com

 

 

‘Flat-Fee Primary Care’ As A GOP-Friendly Way To Provide Routine Health Care

Back in the day, people paid for routine, primary medical care on their own and only used insurance when something serious came up. Some primary care doctors are betting that model can thrive again through a monthly subscription for routine care and a high-deductible insurance policy to take care of the big stuff.

But the changes raise questions about whether that approach really leads to more effective and efficient health care.

Article written by Michelle Andrews

It's easy to understand the appeal of Direct Primary Care, as it's called, for doctors and patients. Doctors charge a monthly fee, generally from $50 to $150, to provide routine clinical care and consultation, sometimes including basic lab work and tests. Patients who need other care, an MRI or surgery, for example, would be covered by their insurance policy, if they have one.

Freed from having to devote time and money to managing insurance claims, doctors say they can accept fewer patients and spend more time with them without focusing on the question of which services are paid for.

Patients, meanwhile, may get more personalized care. They also may save money on insurance if they can pair their primary care plan with a cheaper, high-deductible policy.

Although only a fraction of primary care doctors practice this way, the proportion has grown from 2 percent to 3 percent in the past year, according to data from the American Academy of Family Physicians, which supports this type of practice.

Advocates of direct primary care believe their prospects are bright because the new Republican administration favors market-driven approaches to health care. The plan introduced by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price when he was in Congress would allow people to pay monthly fees for direct primary care with funds from health savings accounts. A bipartisan bill introduced in January for consideration by the current Congress would amend Internal Revenue Service rules to permit that.

William Bayne, a commercial real estate developer in Las Vegas, joined MedLion, a direct primary care company, last October. For $300 a month, Bayne gets routine primary care for himself, his wife and their five children. "It's great for the little stuff that comes up with five kids," says Bayne, 41. They also have a comprehensive family insurance plan.

"Advocates of paying a family doctor a flat monthly fee for office visits and some lab work, say it saves patients money when coupled with a high-deductible insurance plan"

When Bayne's 8-year-old son woke up with what looked like a big pimple on the side of his eye one morning, they called MedLion and made an appointment for 12:30 that afternoon. But their family physician, Dr. Samir Qamar, called before that, having seen their names on the schedule, and asked for a photo of the boy's eye. Qamar said it looked like an oil gland in an eyelid was clogged and suggested they wait a day before coming in, because it would probably clear up on its own. It did.

Qamar used to have a high-end concierge practice in Pebble Beach, Calif., where he provided on-call primary care services. When the Great Recession hit in 2007, he says, he and his wife, who was a physician with a traditional primary care practice, decided to offer concierge-style primary care at a lower price point. They moved to Las Vegas and opened MedLion, which is now available in seven locations in the Las Vegas area and works with 429 affiliated physicians in 25 states.

Like many direct primary care practices, MedLion has shifted its focus from individuals to the employers who offer the service as a benefit. Workers typically pick one of their company's regular insurance plans and add the Direct Primary Care service if they wish to. The company pays the monthly fee for those who choose the option and may or may not pass that cost along to workers.

In perhaps the largest effort of its kind, the state of New Jersey recently kicked off a pilot program with Philadelphia-based direct primary care provider R-Health that aims to enroll at least 60,000 state employees in the first three years.

Not surprisingly, the program is particularly appealing to people with chronic conditions, says Mason Reiner, CEO of R-Health.

"Those are the folks who really need and can benefit from relationship-based primary care," he says. "It can make a big difference for them and for the state, since so much of the cost of care is driven by these folks."

Improving access to primary care is important, says Dr. A. Mark Fendrick, an internist who directs the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design at the University of Michigan. But he cautions that while direct primary care doctors who get a flat monthly fee aren't motivated to provide unnecessary, low-value care, patients don't have the same incentive. For patients, an "all you can eat model" may encourage them to get care they don't need.

"By removing fee-for-service [payments], this model is positive on the provider side," Fendrick says. "But it isn't nuanced enough on the patient side to get the system where we need it to be."

Dr. Sharyl Truty is a Direct Primary Care & Integrative Medicine doctor in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL.  Her innovative approach puts you in charge of your health, free from onerous insurance and health systems’ mandates and protocols. Her practice provides more time per appointment, a doctor who listens and respects your time, knowledge and instincts; and a doctor that puts prevention and lifestyle changes before pills. For more information about Dr. Truty and her unique approach to healthcare call 904-930-4774 or visit www.BalancedPhysicianCare.com

 

sources

Michelle Andrews, Kaiser Health News

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