Primary care plays a critical role in maintaining good health and wellness. But for patients, it may not always feel like that. From a patient’s perspective, today’s traditional primary care setting is often focused on seeing a specific number of patients, meeting financial goals, and navigating insurance company requirements. Primary care in a traditional setting can feel much like a transaction–not a relationship.
This can have a detrimental impact on patients and their health. When patients feel like a cog in a machine, they’re less likely to have confidence in their care and may even see their physician less often.
That’s why the Direct Primary Care model is centered around creating a relationship with patients. When primary care is a relationship, not a transaction, patients are more likely to become invested in their care and feel like their doctor has their best interests at heart. Direct Primary Care clinics like ours are able to take this approach because their incentives are different, and the patient experience improves as a result.
Why Does Traditional Primary Care Feel so Transactional?
It’s entirely possible for a patient to like and get along with their physician and still have a frustrating experience. That’s because the experience of most patients in a traditional primary care setting is driven by economies of scale. Traditional primary care clinics need to see more patients every day, and to do that, they need to grow larger. And to grow larger, they need to see more patients, and so on.
That initial need for scale is driven by a few significant factors, but the greatest is certainly declining reimbursements from insurance carriers over time. Over time, as reimbursements have declined, primary care clinics need to see more patients (and spend less time with those patients) in order to generate the same amount of revenue. This revenue is what keeps the lights on and the staff paid, so it’s difficult for clinics to simply do without.
The current environment also forces clinical decisions to take into account and negotiate with insurance rules when determining the best treatment options for patients. From a patient’s perspective, this can be exceptionally frustrating, and add to the transactional feeling of the overall experience.
How Direct Primary Care is Different
Any primary care doctor–whether practicing in a traditional, concierge, or Direct Primary Care setting–needs time with their patients. That time is what enables them to investigate symptoms, establish root causes, and develop the most effective treatment plans possible. And when appointments aren’t rushed, your doctor is better able to get to know you and your health.
Direct Primary Care clinics operate on a membership model. This means that they aren’t beholden to or restricted by the same insurance market forces as traditional primary care clinics. As a result, DPC clinics are able to keep patient populations much smaller. This has the following benefits:
- You are able to see your primary care physician more often if you wish. (And usually these visits come with no additional baseline cost.)
- Typical primary care visits in a Direct Primary Care setting are longer. This means you’re able to ask more questions and receive more thorough information.
- Your physician gets to know you better. Your primary care doctor has fewer patient relationships to manage and fewer patients to see. This means that your doctor can invest more time and energy into developing the healthcare relationship you establish with them.
Because Direct Primary Care clinics are able to make the needs and time of the patient a priority, the overall experience feels significantly less transactional. It also helps that, in most routine cases, patients won’t have to fight with insurance companies to get the care they need. Additionally, a patient’s primary care doctor won’t need to navigate complex insurance company rules in order to deliver the best possible treatment plan.
Building a Relationship
Building a relationship with patients is what primary care physicians are supposed to do! It’s a critical part of understanding patient health and ensuring patients feel comfortable and supported through their care. This is difficult to accomplish in a traditional primary care setting, but a matter of routine for Direct Primary Care clinics. In general, patients at Direct Primary Care clinics feel less like a cog in a financial machine and more like a valuable member of a community.
Every Direct Primary Care clinic will be slightly different, but find the one nearest you to get started. If you are in the greater Chicago area, contact Progressive Health Primary Care to discuss membership options!
