Dr. Allison and PA Roberts both grew up in rural Texas communities. You can sense the nostalgia as they tell stories about the personalized care they received as children from their family medicine doctors. It was common for the physician to visit their homes and call to check on them. The impact the country doctor had on these two future healthcare providers is obvious. However, Dr. Allison and PA Roberts lament the changes in primary care over the last 40 years. Rare are the days of 30-minute office visits and personalized care. Fee for service insurance company and government-based plans have increasingly industrialized, disintegrated, and impersonalized the patient experience. Many patients now experience long waits and short visits paid for by expensive insurance premiums with copays, coinsurance, facility fees, deductibles and too many other costs to remember. It doesn’t have to be this way!

Direct Primary Care (DPC) is a movement to put the experience back in the hands of patients and their primary care provider. DPC can be considered a new frontier, but it is really a return to the old model while still utilizing the advances of modern medicine. In fact, as new advances in health care are progressing rapidly, it has never been more important for a patient to be connected to a primary care provider. In the DPC model, physicians can spend more time with patients and are also able to use technology to make the patient’s experience more efficient.

At this point, a simplified description of medical economics is helpful.

In the predominant model, fee for service insurance-based medicine:

The provider must see you in person to bill your insurance company.
For you as the patient, this means spending a half day in the waiting room to be seen for simple medical problems that could be handled over the phone by text or a phone call.
Or you may be advised to go an urgent care or emergency department because your PCP cannot work you in.
This means additional expenses seeing someone you have never met.

On the physician side of the model:

Additional staff must be employed to interact with the insurance company.
With government provided insurance plans, compliance officers are needed to make sure that rules are followed by the medical practice.
Rules become more cumbersome and arbitrary as more patients utilize this type of insurance.
This leads to impersonalized care.
Diminishes the time your PCP gets to spend with you.
Leaves you feeling like a number in a crowded medical office full of runny noses.

There is a better way! Direct primary care providers sidestep insurance plans by charging an affordable monthly subscription fee. In this model:

The subscription fee is a flat monthly rate with no hidden fees.
In most cases, this includes lab work.
When x-rays or other imaging services are required, we help you negotiate more affordable rates. You will know the cost beforehand when an outside service is necessary.
If you have an insurance plan, it can still be used for outside expenses. Often, we can help reduce the out-of-pocket expense.
Patients don’t need to miss work or school for straight forward problems.
At Patient First DPC, you have your physician or PA at your fingertips. A simple text will take care of many of your concerns.
This means that there is more time for in person visits for complex, chronic concerns.
Additionally, when you reach out, you will communicate directly with Mark or Dr. Allison. That is why it is called “direct” primary care.
Direct primary care providers do not carry the large volume of patients necessary to sustain a practice due to the bloated expenses common in the current model.
Micro-practices like Patient First DPC limit the number of patients each provider will follow. This means more focus on you!

This brings us to the real question, is Patient First DPC right for you? Let’s talk about it. Schedule a free in person consultation where we can sit down with a cup of coffee to discuss it. Or, we can talk on the phone. You get to choose!

Why The Change to Direct Primary Care?