Reason 3 will help you save $$$
Introduction
The American healthcare system was concieved with primary care physicians (PCP) as the core. They are patient’s guide to navigate the system. Why require primary care when you can just have Specialists? you may ask. Many people do use the healthcare system that way, leading to less than optimal outcomes.
For one, primary care physicians are the only ones that have the whole picture of the patient’s health history. Specialists are concerned about their specific parts of interest. For example, Cardiologist will know about your heart issues but will not know that you had a toe nail removal last month.
Let us first tackle the question why a PCP is absolutely necessary and then we will see why direct primary care doctors make the best PCPs.
4 Reasons to have PCPs
Reason 1: PCPs help you navigate the healthcare system
Have you been to an African safari? Can you imagine going to the safari by yourself without a guide? No. Don’t even think about it!
American healthcare system is more dangerous and complicated than the jungles of Africa. Navigating it requires a guide that knows your health history, food habits, life events, job loss – the whole picture of you.
Your PCP can correlate events, habits and other history to the health problems and decide who and what kind of a specialist is required. Therefore, such decisions are better left to the experts than patients.
Reason 2: PCPs stop you from going to a brain surgeon for headache!
How many of you have googled your symptoms and freaked out??!! Dr. Google always make it sound headaches are some sort of brain tumors. Enter your PCP! They have the expertise to know which headaches are benign and which ones really need a brain scan and neuro-surgeon referral.
With PCP, you not only avoid the anxiety but also unnecessary spending for specialist care and imaging services.
Reason 3: PCPs help you spend less on healthcare
Imagine this scenario – you don’t have a PCP, you have just googled about your headache and freaked out that it sounds like a brain tumor! If you go ahead and schedule an appointment with Neuro-surgeon and if your surgeon requires you to get MRIs, think of the bills!
At the level of Neuro-surgeon, they assume the worst case scenario and would possibly want to rule out life threatening conditions. That is one big spend to finally know you had a simple head ache.
Specialists are the expensive part of the healthcare. When patients go to them, they should have already ruled out all the simple explanations for the problem. That is where PCPs come. They rule out all the simple obvious causes, the least expensive ones, before referring you out.
Reason 4: PCPs can treat more than 80% of all healthcare issues
If you do a pareto of all the health issues any individual gets, more than 80% of those issues are treat-able in a primary care setting. These are also the issues that occur more frequently and are not expensive to treat.
- Procedures like toe-nail removal, small laceration repairs, wart removal
- Treatment of chronic issues like Diabetes, hypertension, thyroid and other hormone issues
20% of the healthcare issues are issues like cancer, cardio-vascular issues, surgeries that require specialist intervention and are typically quiet expensive.
A non-exhaustive list of services at Meridian Springs Primary Care is listed below –
Why Direct Primary Care doctors make the best PCPs
The healthcare side of the direct primary care model is exactly identical to any other primary care clinic. What sets the DPC practices apart is the business side. DPC clinics are subscription based, there is a flat monthly fee without per visit copays of any kind. What this switch in the business model does is the following –
- With virtually unlimited clinic visits, DPCs incentivize members to take those preventive care trips and not neglect doctor visits as is usually the case. In most cases, people ignore preventive care (less expensive) due to various reasons that land them in specialist care (expensive)
- DPCs let people maximize on affordable primary care so as to not land in the expensive specialist care
- DPCs make health coverage more like a typical insurance (auto, home owners) so premiums go towards covering catastrophic issues and not routine care. This makes healthcare more affordable and quite accessible.
To learn more about Meridian Springs Primary Care’s DPC model, visit our FAQ section.