Health Sharing Ministries and Direct Primary Care
Audio provided by DPC Podcasts on Liberty Healthshare
Direct Primary Care
High Deductible Blues
It is the beginning of the year and you have health insurance, right? You chose a high-deductible plan because it was the best you could afford. However, with a high deductible plan you essentially are likely going to pay for everything out of pocket unless you end-up having a medical event or surgery that puts you in the hospital.
What is your strategy for your health? Do you have a plan or will you just worry about it when it happens? Let us play through a few scenarios and see which one seems to work better if you have a high deductible plan.
Scenario #1
It is Friday night and you start getting a headache and over-the-counter medications just don't cut it. The Urgent Care is closed at 8pm and your choice is the ER. You go to the ER and are seen your blood pressure is high and the cause of your headache. After a CT scan, bloodwork and a long night in the ER. Your health bill totals over $3000.
Scenario #2
You cut your hand on Thursday morning making breakfast. It is not a deep cut, but enough that you need stitches. You to the local Urgent Care and they say they are unable to stitch you up because the cut it is located in a place the provider is not comfortable with, so they tell you to go to the ER. You head to the ER and there is a long wait. After about 4 hours and over $1000 later you are finally done. You get an antibiotic to take to prevent infection, but you go to the pharmacy and it costs $70. What choice do you have? Do you need it? Is there an alternative? There is no one to call.
Is there another option? You're a victim of the system what can you do?
There is another option.
Scenario #3
You had a headache a week ago and emailed your new DPC physician. She reminded you to check your blood pressure and because it was high and you had no other issues she called in a higher dose of your medication and you came in to the office the next day at a convenient time for you. She was able to quote you the price of your medication over the phone, so that it only cost you $4. Today, you cut yourself with a kitchen knife. You called her and you were in the office later that day and out in 30 min all stitched up. You only lost 90 min at work.
The cost a Direct Primary Membership.
Direct Primary Care Membership + a High Deductble Plan
Gives you COMPLETE coverage at a low fixed cost. (Like adding a "rider" to your insurance plan)
For less than $1500 a year (Less than the cost of 1 ER Visit)
- You get personal care on nights and weekends
- You get complete advice at the tips of your fingers thorugh email.
- You get care in your home or work through home phone calls and video visits
- You get the best deals in town on health testing because your DPC membership shops for them.
- You save on prescriptions because you and your doctor discuss the price before you leave.
- Your get a doctor who coordinates specialists and helps you sort through conflicting advice.
- Consider a long-term view of your health. Add some kick to your health care plan.
Call about Direct Primary Care today!
Dr Sharyl Truty MD is Physician Owner of Balanced Physician Care located in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. She has been engaged in family medicine, sports medicine, acupuncture and orthopedics for almost 15 years in many different capacities. Dr. Sharyl is Board Certified in Family Practice and Sports Medicine, and fellow of the Integrative Medicine Program at the University of Arizona (Dr Weil) and a graduate of the UCLA Physician Acupuncture Program. Please call 1-833-HEAL JAX to find out on how to become a member.
Telemedicine, One Better
Telemedicine is emerging in healthcare. If you do an internet search you can find several companies where you can schedule a visit and see a physician instantly for a low cash price. It seems like a great deal, does it not?
The biggest issue however, is that it is NOT your own doctor. If you don't list all of your medications or medical problems in the pre-visit question section, the physician you see is missing information that may be critical to your care. Furthermore, you not sure what type of physician you are getting because you have not met them, do they practice the type of medicine you want to have? Is there a better solution when it comes to telemedicine?
There is...
Direct Primary Care + Telemedicine = Quality, Convenient Care
Direct Primary Care is an emerging membership model throughout the country. At its core is the premise that you have direct access to your doctor when you need it. You get to meet your doctor and see if they are right for you. You doctor gets to know you before you have an issue. If you get sick afterhours and weekends, a direct primary care doctor uses a telemedicine visit to care for your needs from the comfort of your own home. There is no need to make sure you've entered everything in the computer because you doctor knows you. The visits are fast, convenient and very satisfying.
Regardless of your Telemedicine choice, there are a few things I do recommend doing to prepare for your visit:
1) Get a Thermometer. Check your temperature. A lot of decisions when you are sick with an upper respitory infection depend upon whether you have a fever.
2) Get a blood pressure machine. This is especially true if you have any heart or blood pressure issues. Knowing your blood pressure can go a long way in making decisions.
3) Be open to an alternative diagnosis. You've done your research on the internet and you are absolutely sure you know the diagnosis and just want to a quick prescription medication. Sound familiar? Remember, the sign of a good doctor is to entertain the unusual to be sure you are not missing something else. Be patient with any questioning that they may provide and be open if they think something else is going on or ask you to follow-up with your own physician in a few days.
4) Realize that not everything can be done on-line. Abdominal pain, skin abscesses and dizziness issues are just a few things that are best still seen in person. Be open to the on-line doctor telling you that you need to go in somewhere to be seen. A good physician's credo is "do no harm", so often it is a wise decision to recommend a visit in person even if it turns out to be nothing serious. It is always better to error on the cautious even if inconvenient side when it comes to protecting your health.
Optimize Your Health, Simplify Your Life
Dr Sharyl Truty MD
Find out more about Direct Primary Care in Jacksonville, the Beaches, & Ponte Vedra at BalancedPhysicianCare.com
Direct Primary Care for Athletes
Learn How Direct Primary Care Helps Athletes and Weekend Warriors Stay at the Top of Their Game
Whether you’re a weekend warrior or professional, a fitness enthusiast, or you just enjoy to be active, you understand the need for training and conditioning your body. How your body looks on the outside is just as important as how it looks on the inside. To maintain your current fitness level and ensure you stay at the top of your game for many years to come, you will need regular advice from a physician you can trust. At Balanced Physician Care, we offer Direct Primary Care (“DPC”) memberships for weekend warriors and endurance athletes that will keep your body and mind conditioned so you can stay at the top of your game.
The following outlines the benefits of a DPC membership for weekend warriors and endurance athletes:
Our Founder Is Sports Medicine Board Certified
A Sports Medicine Physician is specially trained for total care of athletes and active individuals. After graduating medical school from Loyola University’s Stritch School of Medicine in Illinois, our founder, Dr. Sharyl Truty, a former college basketball player at the University of Indianapolis herself, completed the Phoebe Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship Program in Georgia and trained in acupuncture through the UCLA-Helms Acupuncture certification for physicians. She served as primary care physician for the Chicago Red Stars women’s professional soccer team and has covered the Chicago Marathon yearly for 15 years. She also recently completed an Integrative Medicine Fellowship at the University of Arizona with Dr. Andrew Weil. As a physician, athlete and mother, Dr. Sharyl strives to provide all athletes the most trusted and balanced perspective on their health.
Feel Like a Pro with Direct Primary Care’s White Glove Services
Direct Primary Care membership offers 24/7 access to your physician by phone and text. For in office visits, we offer relaxed, extended appointment times. You will never feel rushed or have to wait. As a Direct Primary Care member at Balanced Physician Care, our physicians can help you with:
- Acute injuries such as ankle sprains, dislocations and non-surgical fractures;
- Overuse injuries including stress fractures, tendonitis and osteoarthritis;
- Traumatic brain injuries or concussions;
- Acute illnesses such as asthma, mononucleosis, cold or flu;
- Exercise prescriptions for people who want to be more active;
- Return to play decisions for injured or ill athletes;
- Evaluations of supplements, multivitamins and herbal medications;
- Acupuncture consultations and treatments;
- Cortisone injections;
- Cupping therapy;
- Dry needling;
- Trigger point injections;
- Mindfulness education; and
- Mind body techniques for improving performance.
Every membership includes an annual wellness physical, comprehensive 60-minute exam, biometric lab panel, and pap or prostate screening. We offer unlimited in office visits with no copays. Three (3) complimentary acupuncture visits are also included, along with holistic and integrative medicine consultations.
Prevent Injuries and Speed Recovery Times with Direct Primary Care
As we age, our muscles and joints do not recover as quickly as they used to and are more prone to injuries. Whether you are starting a new workout routine or continuing with an old one, it’s important to ensure your body is in optimal health. As your Direct Primary Care sports medicine physician, we will work with you to create an exercise plan to help prevent injuries. When injuries occur, our physicians will work with you to explore options beyond surgery.
Stay Active With Direct Primary Care
For athletes and active individuals to stay at the top of their game, they need a proper nutrition plan, exercise routine, and regular checkups with a Sport Medicine physician they can trust – a former athlete, now physician. At Balanced Physician Care, we offer affordable Direct Primary Care plans designed to simplify your life and optimize your health. For more information on Balanced Physician Care, call (904) 930-4774 or visit www.balancedphysiciancare.com.
Direct Primary Care for Pediatrics
Learn Why You Should Choose This Innovative Healthcare Model for Your Children
At Balanced Physician Care, we offer affordable Direct Primary Care membership plans for parents and their children. Direct Primary Care (“DPC”) is an innovative model of medical care that provides transparent, comprehensive, affordable, and accessible care. For a small monthly fee, your family can have full access to a physician 24/7 by phone and text. This level of care is designed to help you simplify your life and optimize the health of everyone in your family.
The following outlines the benefits of a DPC membership for your children:
We Offer Improved Patient Relationships & Convenient Care
Our physicians don’t work for insurance companies. Instead, we work for patients and their families. In addition to being available 24/7 by phone and text, we also offer same day in office appointments with no wait times. If your child is severely allergic to insect bites and gets bit by fire ants, instead of rushing to the hospital or an acute care center to wait hours for someone to see you, you can text a photo of the bite to your physician, who will review the photo, and call, text or email you immediately with care instructions. If your child gets a cold or the flu, by going through a series of questions, your physician can diagnose your child’s infection and order an antibiotic by phone, without you ever having to leave the comforts of your home.
We Help Manage Your Child’s Chronic Illness
When a child is diagnosed with a chronic illness such as asthma, diabetes, obesity, or mental illness, regardless of your wealth, it is a burden on any family. Children with chronic illness may be well at any given time, but they are always living with their condition. Parents are required to deal with the child’s needs on a daily basis. At Balanced Physician Care, our goal is to create a treatment plan that helps reduce your child’s symptoms and your family’s overall healthcare costs. If your child suffers from a chronic disease such as diabetes, our physicians can provide the tools your family needs including, nutrition and diet evaluations, advice on supplements and multi vitamins, and help creating personalized exercise programs.
We Help Keep Your Child’s Brain and Body Conditioned
Whether your child is an all-star athlete or all-star mathlete, to ensure they perform at the top of their game, they will need diet, nutrition and exercise advice from a medical professional. At Balanced Physician Care, we offer annual physicals for all of our members, including Sports Physicals. Additionally, our physicians will work with you and your child to develop a diet and exercise plan, teach injury prevention strategies, and mind-body techniques for improving performance.
We Prescribe Wellness, Not More Meds
When thinking about your child’s health, it is important to also think about the long-term effects of taking medications. Some medications are absolutely necessary; while some can be completely avoided by improving diet, sleep habits, and physical activity. At Balanced Physician Care, our founder & physician, Dr. Sharyl Truty is board certified in Family Medicine and Sports Medicine. Dr. Sharyl uses her background in Integrative Medicine to apply a holistic approach to healing for our patients and their children. From managing chronic illness symptoms to pulled muscles and other acute injuries, our physicians will work with you and your child to create a holistic treatment plan that you can trust.
Invest in Direct Primary Care for Your Child Today!
Dr Sharyl Truty MD
At Balanced Physician Care, we work with your family to create a wellness plan that simplifies your life and optimizes your health. Child Add-On Memberships are either just $69 a month for Premier Plan and $49 per month for Basic Plan.
And the more family you add, the bigger the savings...
We offer 2 different Family Plans, With the purchase of two, Adult DPC Memberships, you can include up to 3 dependent children for a discount rate per month. For more information on Balanced Physician Care, call (904) 930-4774 or visit BalancedPhysicianCare.com
Direct Primary Care for your Children
Giving Mothers the Gift of Time.
Mother's Day is around the corner this week. Direct Primary Care membership can be a huge help for all types of mothers. Whether you are a working mother looking to balance a career and your newborn or are a stay at home mother with your third or fourth child on the way Direct Primary Care can help take a few things off your plate, make your life simpler, and give you the gift of time. At Balanced Physician Care, Dr. Sharyl Truty, your physician, becomes a direct partner by providing a hands on, personal resource you can tap into at anytime.
A Hands-on Resource at Any Time
For parents with a newborn, life can be pretty intense those first few weeks of life. Even if the birth of your newborn child went smoothly or even if you are an experienced parent, new challenges always arise seeming to test our understanding of how to care for and protect this new life. While our own mothers can be a great resource for helping us navigate new waters sometimes they are not always up on the latest medical understandings. Sometimes the issues can be simple, but immediate and who wants to wait for the next wellness visit to get your questions answered? If is is more complicated, who wants to go scrambling to a crowded emergency room and waiting hours with an unhappy infant? By having a Direct Primary Care membership at Balanced Physician Care, if an issue comes up at 5pm on Friday evening with your newborn or young toddler, you call you doctor directly for answers. You get direct contact with your physician and immediate peace of mind.
More Time for You, Less Time in the Waiting Room
For some parents, long waits in the waiting room to see your physician can be difficult. If you are a working mother, needing to be at work you often have to rely on others to do the task of helping you take your child to well visits. If you have several children, you can feel like you live at the doctor's office. With a Direct Primary Care membership, you are seen if the office right away and unnecessary visits are minimized giving you more time to spend enjoying playful and learning activities with you children rather than long hours in a waiting room. If you have a child with a chronic disease such as asthma, eczema or attention deficit disorder, visits such as these can add-up.
Sound Holistic Advice from a Trusted Source
Holistic care can be very important to some mothers. Even if a child is very healthy, issues do arise from the inevitable cold and flu season to dealing with picky eaters. At Balanced Physician Care, our membership allows Dr. Sharyl Truty the time to spend counseling mothers on holistic options from dietary advice to natural herbals that are safe in children. For children who are struggling with chronic diseases, often answers cannot only be found in conventional medicine, having a physician you can trust for advice on what holistic options make the most sense for the personality of your child can be invaluable.
At Balanced Physician Care, our goal is to optimize the health of your child and simplify your life. Let us help to create a wellness plan for your child that goes beyond wellness checks and immunizations. A Direct Primary Care membership works as a compliment to health insurance as is designed to provide very personalized, quality care. Let Balanced Physician Care, give you the gift of time this Mother's Day.
Wishing all mothers this upcoming Sunday, a very special and Happy Mother's Day.
Dr Sharyl Truty MD
Dr Sharyl Truty has been in practice as both a board-certified family medicine and a board-certified sports medicine physician for over 13 years. She completed a fellowship in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, by Dr. Andrew Weil. For more information on Balanced Physician Care and its Direct Primary Care membership plan visit www.BalancedPhysicianCare.com
Do You File Insurance When You Change Your Car’s Oil?
The Case for Direct Primary Care
Of course, you don’t. Car insurance is typically for catastrophes, covering injuries and property damage in the horrible case of an accident.
It’s not for gas, oil changes, tire rotations, or windshield wiper replacements; these are routine maintenance items – can you imagine if auto insurance covered these, it’d be really complicated and expensive.
Unlike auto insurance, we use health insurance for everything: routine, preventive and emergency care – no need to imagine, you know how expensive and complicated these plans are.
And when insurance claims are filed for every little thing, insurance premiums rise. So, the only logical way to decrease insurance premiums is to reduce the frequency of claims filed.
Balanced Physician Care can help
To reduce frequency of claims, our solution divides healthcare needs into those healthcare services which are used often, and those which are used rarely.
Primary care, with its routine physicals, acute care, chronic condition management, refills, and lab orders fall into 80-90 percent of services that are used most.
And when used in a Direct Primary Care setting, the majority of healthcare is included as part of the membership, so filing an insurance claim is no longer required. Also Direct Primary Care, caps the cost into an affordable, manageable, flat monthly fee.
That means 10 to 20 percent of care is for those rare catastrophic occurrences that are really expensive and should be covered by insurance. As a result, insurance use (and cost) is minimized.
So, if you separate the emergency stuff from the routine, suddenly healthcare becomes more affordable.
Employers are using Direct Primary Care to lower healthcare costs
Business owners are smart, and given some time, they can figure most things out – that goes for healthcare too.
Across the country, many forward-thinking CEOs and business owners have discovered that Direct Primary Care returns control back to them and returns wasted healthcare dollars back to their bottom line.
They realize by using the car insurance approach to healthcare, the can use a high-deductible plan for major healthcare issues (Accidents, hospitalization, cancers etc.) and use a direct primary care plan for all the regular routine stuff and save money on their healthcare spend at the same time.
It’s the way healthcare should be.
Interested in learning more about Direct Primary Care? Give us a call at 904-930-4774
By Shawn Fox, Co-founder IdealMD
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
‘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
