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Some family doctors ditch insurance for simpler approach
[Med Press] Dr. Emilie Scott was only a few months into her first job when she started hearing the complaint: She was spending too much time with each patient.Like many primary care doctors working in large medical systems, Scott was encouraged to see a new patient every 20 minutes. But that was barely enough time to talk and do a physical. She eventually quit her job to try a new approach aimed at eliminating many of the headaches of traditional health care: tight schedules, short appointments and piles of insurance paperwork. Instead of billing insurers, Scott now charges patients a $79 monthly fee that covers office visits, phone calls, emails, texts and certain medical tests and procedures. Scott typically sees six patients a day, down from around 30, and spends more time at each appointment. She hired two assistants to help handle paperwork compared with working with a department of billing specialists. This approach —direct primary care—aims to leverage the extra time and money from avoiding insurance into improving care for patients. "As far as our financial success, it does not depend upon having a team of people to figure out how to get money from the insurance company," said Scott, who co-owns a private practice in Irvine, California that serves about 900 patients. Scott said the practice has grown by word-of-mouth, without advertising. In many ways, direct primary care is a return to a simpler time when doctors charged cash for their services. Patients say they appreciate the accessibility and simplicity of the system. But health care researchers question its cost-effectiveness and whether it will ever be capable of serving large numbers of people. Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2019-11-21 |
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