Why We Recommend Direct Primary Care for Employee Benefits
I gathered my video recording equipment while trying to unpack all the horror stories. Fortunately, these stories all had a great ending. My journey as an employee benefits consultant brought me to the offices of several different Direct Primary Care (DPC) businesses in the Raleigh-Durham area. I interviewed each physician, and their stories all had a similar hero’s journey:
Having a childhood dream of becoming a primary care doctor to help people
Graduating with excitement, eager to begin seeing real patients!
Joining a traditional primary care practice where they were required to have an extensive client roster in the thousands, become an expert coder and biller to secure the best reimbursement rates, and document, document, and document some more in whatever electronic medical record system was in place.
Burnout
Fortunately, as I mentioned, this horror story of well-meaning physicians finding themselves on the verge (or in the middle of) burn-out has another chapter. They all discovered a new way of practicing medicine. Instead of working for the insurance company, they became entrepreneurs. They started their practices using the Direct Primary Care model.
Direct Primary Care is a membership model for receiving primary care services. They typically do not take insurance. Instead, they bill membesr a set monthly fee. You may have heard of “concierge medicine” and assumed Direct Primary Care was the same, but from my experience, the DPC model is more affordable and offers the personal touch so many of us desire from our family physicians.
Because Direct Primary Care physicians do not take insurance, they no longer have to fit their practice of medicine into the reimbursement rates and insurance documentation requirements. They are free to practice medicine with a smaller group of patients and offer same-day/next-day care, text-based messaging support, discounted labs, and more. Each practice has its pricing and strategy, but at the time of this blog post, you can have a monthly membership for around $75/mo, depending on your age and services.
We believe that investing in a Direct Primary Care membership for your employees is worth exploring for the following reasons:
Direct Primary Care physicians tend to offer more comprehensive services, resulting in fewer visits to urgent care and even specialists because of the active relationship and partnership with a DPC
You are offering what feels like a “premium” service to your employees, paying for their monthly membership, and helping to accomplish our “do right” motto for your employees.
DPCs can work with any plan, particularly paired with a high deductible plan, which helps reduce the monthly premiums while covering primary care at 100% with no co-pays for your employees.
So, if DPCs are so great, why aren’t more businesses offering this to their employees? First, it takes a little more work and intentionality.
For instance, instead of just paying one bill to the insurance carrier, you manage a couple of invoices depending on the number of DPCs you offer. Another challenge is whether your area has any brick-and-mortar DPC offices near your employee population. The good news is that we have found effective virtual DPC models to fill the gap for employers with employees scattered across areas without physical DPC options.
We love partnering with DPCs as part of our clients' comprehensive health plan strategy. If this interests you feel free to schedule a time for a call together.