What is DPC?
DPC stands for “Direct Primary Care”. In short, DPC alleviates the inefficiencies of health insurance for the purposes of primary care, allowing you to pay your doctor directly. Paying your doctor directly results in the ability to schedule prompt appointments as well as allowing extended time with your primary care physician during each appointment.
An alternative way to do primary care
DPC is a primary care option that avoids the cumbersomeness of standard health “insurance” regarding primary care. As a DPC participant, your doctor is directly paid by you, avoiding the hidden fees of low-deductable insurance. By providing primary care services outside of standard insurance, DPC is able to revolutionize patient care while lowering monthly costs.
As a DPC we are not opposed to standard medical insurance; we in fact encourage it. The original concept of insurance was noble and designed as a protection from high risk/low probability events. These are things like car accidents, house fires, emergencies, or ongoing health issues requiring speciality care. Ideally, medical insurance should be there for us in the same way we use auto insurance and homeowner’s insurance, which protect us from things like car accidents or fires. This is why we simply directly pay for routine and expected costs (like oil changes and simple home repairs).
That’s not how modern health insurance works though…
A quick analogy…
To illustrate this, here’s an analogy: Imagine you are taking your car for an oil change. When the job is completed, rather than you paying your mechanic directly, he files an auto insurance claim, seeking payment from your insurance policy. You may be unaware of the full amount the mechanic charged for the oil change, nor have any idea the amount your auto insurance company eventually paid the mechanic. Now, also imagine that every other person in the country paid for oil changes in the same way. This would drastically increases the cost of auto insurance for everyone, even those not seeking reimbursement for oil changes.
This course of action seems insensible and complicated. This plan would enable the mechanic to charge inflated or inconsistent fees, while the auto insurance company could dictate what kind of maintenance you receive on your personal car. You, as the car owner, would have minimal control of the decisions regarding any of the general care for your own vehicle.
Unfortunately, that is how we currently handle our healthcare. We use insurance not solely for high risk/unlikely events (like emergency surgery), but also for low risk/likely events (like primary care). This results in high prices because there’s no price transparency, as well as longer wait times for poorer patient care.
An alternative way:
Direct Primary Care removes the middle man of insurance companies to allow you to directly pay your doctor. When you pay an insurance premium or deductible, the money from it passes through many hands in the insurance company, each taking their share, before getting to your doctor. This means you pay more and your doctor earns less for the same amount of care. The natural result of this is that your doctor has to see more patients. A lot more. Having so many more patients means their schedules are completely full necessitating very short appointments.
With DPC, your doctor does not need to see thousands of patients, which means shorter wait times to be seen. It also means that you get more time with your doctor when you do have an appointment. It allows your doctor to be able to actually get to know you.
If you would like to investigate further or join us in the DPC model, we encourage you to come see us at Iatros Family Health.
Your next-step information can be found here.