Direct Primary Care (DPC) is an innovative alternative payment model improving access to high functioning healthcare with a simple, flat, affordable membership fee. No fee-for-service payments. No third party billing. The defining element of DPC is an enduring and trusting relationship between a patient and his or her primary care provider. Patients have extraordinary access to a physician of their choice, often for as little as $69 per month, and physicians are accountable first and foremost their patients. DPC is embraced by health policymakers on the left and right and creates happy patients and happy doctors all over the country!
Better Health Outcomes
Patients achieve superior health outcomes with Direct Primary Care's innovative service delivery. DPCs provide better access to physicians, empower an authentic therapeutic relationship, and comprehensive patient care.
Lower Costs
Affordable, transparent costs based on a periodic overall flat rate (i.e. membership or subscription). Patients pay for their care directly to the physician. No third parties or Fee for Service billing ("FFS") to inflate costs. Most DPC memberships/subscriptions cost less than the average cell phone bill.
Enhanced Patient Experience
Patients receive unrestrictive access to their healthcare provider, report little to no wait time, and longer appointments (in person, virtually, or phone). In turn, creating a real therapeutic relationship between patient and provider.
Primary Care is Foundational; DPC provides important new alternative
Improves patient-doctor relationship
Reduces ER visits and unnecessary care, lowers costs for employers
Improves physician satisfaction
The DPC Coalition and American Academy of Family Physicians spent two years in collaboration with Milliman and the Society of Actuaries on a comprehensive evaluation of Direct Primary Care (DPC) as a growing health care delivery and financing model. The full report was published last week by the Society of Actuaries as a part of their ongoing research on health care cost trends. The Society of Actuaries report shows how the new and growing DPC financing and delivery model provides an alternative to traditional fee-for-service-based primary care, improving the patient-doctor relationship, reducing the fragmentation of patient care, as well as personal and professional satisfaction for PCPs.
This important research shines new actuarially sound light on how DPC generates system wide reductions in unnecessary health care utilization such as hospitalization, emergency department usage, radiology and certain diagnostics, and specialist care, leading to broad-based health care cost savings. “Primary care physicians (PCPs) are the front line of health care,” the report concludes. “How often a patient accesses primary care, and the quality of that care, can have significant impacts on downstream costs and patient health outcomes.” However, the study concludes, “while PCPs are almost universally acknowledged as essential to achieving the health care Triple Aim of providing high-quality care, at lower cost,” the current state of primary care as being in crisis characterized by physician burnout, large patient panels, and low pay for PCPs relative to other physician specialties with increased administrative burden and longer work hours. Key data points:
Virtual Care and Telehealth are at the core of DPC service offerings:
99% of all DPC practices surveyed were doing virtual consults via text/phone as a part of the membership fee (two years prior to COVID-19).
88% said they provided “telemedicine” benefits (meaning expanded video or additional digital communications assets).
Enrollment in DPC is associated with a reduction in overall member demand for health care services outside primary care:
DPC members had 19.90% lower claim costs for employers on an unadjusted basis and 12.64% lower claim costs on a risk-adjusted basis during the two-year period.
DPC members experienced approximately 40% fewer ER visits that those in traditional plans.
DPC members experienced a 53.6% reduction in ER claims cost.
DPC members experienced 25.54% lower hospital admissions on an unadjusted basis. While this figure may have statistically variance, it validates previous research trends showing a reduction in the use of hospitalization and more complex specialty care by DPC members.
DPC is Affordable Primary Care:
The average adult monthly DPC Fee is $73.92. (DPC fees are paid on a monthly subscription basis).
Concierge patients enrolled in an MDVIP membership pay an annual membership fee ranging from $1,650 to $2,200; MDVIP also bills third-party payers for all services provided to members.
The median age for DPC patient was 31.8 years old, v. 36.1 for traditional insured (PPO). The survey finds the member mix did not vary materially between the DPC option and traditional option.
How would you benefit if your relationship with your doctor was described as “Netflix meets Costco?”
Direct Primary Care, or DPC, is a new way of providing primary care that is making good on its promise to help people stay healthier and spend less on healthcare. Dr. Kirby Farnsworth, owner of Simply Direct Health, shares the story of what attracted him to choose DPC over traditional primary care models, how he can provide many medications at or near cost, and why referring physicians love it just as much as patients.
Direct Primary Care (DPC) challenges the very definition of healthcare in America. More and more research has shown that DPC improves the access to and the quality of care, as well as reduces healthcare cost, mostly by reducing unnecessary healthcare utilization. Unnecessary healthcare utilization is a scourge: It is responsible for upwards of 10 percent of our nation’s healthcare bill. Certainly, the tests and procedures we perform in medicine saves lives, but unnecessary tests and procedures expose patients to unjustified risks.
In February 2016, I founded Balanced Physician Care to bring this emerging model of Direct Care to Northeast Florida. Since then, my love for my profession has returned. Having enough time to spend with each patient has invigorated my passion for medicine. I’m finally practicing medicine the way I always envisioned I could and should. I mention this because the joy I now feel in the practice of medicine is in fact what makes the Direct Primary Care model not just viable but essential.
Critics have argued that widespread adoption of the DPC model will only exacerbate the primary care physician shortage because by necessity it will significantly reduce the number of patients each physician sees. In the short run, this might indeed prove true. But unless a workable solution is found to reverse primary care physician dissatisfaction, a critical shortage is already inevitable. According to a survey conducted by the Urban Institute in 2012, 30 percent of primary care physicians between the ages of 35 to 49 and 53 percent of primary care physicians over the age of 50 want to quit medicine altogether.
Primary care physician patient panel sizes haven’t risen to their current levels of 2,500 to 4,000 patients because primary care physicians believe that these sizes are optimal for patient care. They’ve risen to these levels because insurance reimbursement for primary care hasn’t kept pace with the expense of running a practice, and primary care physicians have been forced to increase the number of patients they see to survive financially. This has resulted not only in poorer access to care, poorer quality of care and increased healthcare costs, but also in dramatically increased primary care physician dissatisfaction. What’s required is a new model that attracts physicians into primary care.
Personalized, quality healthcare is not possible when physicians are handing patient panels of over 4,000 or more in size. No matter how many wellness screenings are being performed. Direct Primary Care has been proven to bring quality, personalized medicine back. According to an article in the British Medical Journal in October 2013, patients of DPC practices enjoy 65 percent less ER visits, 35 percent less hospitalizations and 82 percent less urgent care visits.
Primary care — and with it, all of healthcare — is in crisis. Access to personalized care is limited, the quality of care is poor (despite spending more per capita on healthcare than any other country in the world), the life expectancy of U.S. citizens ranks only 26th out of the 36 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and costs are spiraling out of control. Though many view the new model of Direct Primary Care with skepticism, derision and even fear, new models that ultimately prove successful are often initially greeted that way. But if we can challenge our fear, personally changing to a direct primary care model might just prove in the big picture to be the single most effective solution for the most significant problems facing American healthcare today and even more importantly, ensuring the health of the ones you love.
Optimize Your Health, Simplify Your Life,
Dr Sharyl Truty MD
Dr. Sharyl Truty is the physician-owner of a Direct Primary Care practice called Balanced Physician Care located in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL. She has been in practice as both a board-certified Family Medicine and a board-certified Sports Medicine physician for over 15 years. She has completed a fellowship in Integrative Medicine from the University of Arizona with Dr. Andrew Weil. She has practiced Acupuncture for over 12 years after having trained in China and completed the UCLA physician acupuncture certification. Dr.Truty is committed to finding the best solutions to help you live the best-balanced life possible.
