August 25th, 2010 by KevinMD in Better Health Network
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Abraham Verghese is a professor of medicine at Stanford University and one of the most articulate physician-writers today. He recently wrote an op-ed highlighting primary care’s plight, and focuses on the scarcity of time:
The science of medicine has never been more potent – incredible advances and great benefits realized in the treatment of individual diseases – yet the public perception of us physicians is often one of a harried individual more interested in the virtual construct of the patient in the computer than in the living, breathing patient seated on the exam table.Time is the scarcest commodity of all. Patients, particularly when it comes to their routine, day-to-day care, want a physician who has time to understand them as people first, and then as patients.
It’s been frequently discussed on this blog, with solutions ranging from paying physicians per hour to cash-only practices.
There’s no easy answer, and worse, money isn’t even the root of the problem. Often left unaddressed is the burnout that primary care doctors face, practicing in unpalatable environments where the doctor-patient relationship is obstructed by bureaucracy and paperwork. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
March 26th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Expert Interviews, Opinion
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When most people think of “cash-only” medical practices, plastic surgery and dermatology procedures are top of mind. But there is a small contingent of primary care physicians who offer low-cost “pay-as-you-go” services. Yearly physicals, well-child visits, screening tests, vaccinations, and chronic disease management are all part of comprehensive primary care options available. And this costs the average patient only $300 a year.
It is estimated that 75% of Americans require an average of 3.5 office visits per year to receive all the medical care they need. If the average office visit is 15-20 minutes in length, then that averages out to 1 hour of a physician’s time each year. How much should that cost? Dr. Alan Dappen (founder of Doctokr Family Medicine, a cash-only primary care practice in Vienna, Virginia) says, “$300.” But insurance premiums are often closer to $300 per month for these Americans, and that doesn’t include co-pays for provider visits.
So why aren’t people buying high deductible insurance plans, saving thousands on premiums per year, and flocking to cash-only primary care practices? Dr. Dappen says it’s a simple matter of mindset – “People have been conditioned to believe that if they pay their insurance premiums, then healthcare is ‘free.’ In reality, their employers are taking out $3600 or more per year from their paychecks for this ‘free’ care. But since employees don’t see that money, they don’t miss it as much.”
A high deductible health insurance plan (where insurance doesn’t kick in until you’ve paid at least $3000 out of pocket in a given year) costs about $110/month for the generally healthy 75% of Americans (you can check rates at eHealthInsurance.com). That’s a savings of at least $2280/year for those who switch from a regular deductible plan to a high deductible plan.
What are the odds that the average, reasonably healthy American will outspend $2280/year? I asked Alan Dappen how many of his 1500 patients spent more than $2000 on his services per year. The answer? Three.
“Most Americans who buy-in to low deductible plans pay a lot more in premiums than they’ll ever use. They’re essentially betting against the casino, and we all know who wins on those bets.”
So I asked Alan Dappen if “the casino” was making most of its money on the “healthy” 75% of its enrollees to subsidize the cost of the sick 25%.
“Sure they are. And I suppose if enough people saw the light and switched to high deductible plans with cash-only physicians, it might force change in the health insurance industry. Perhaps the government would use our taxes to help subsidize the sicker patients.
The bottom line is that at this very moment, 75% of Americans could be saving thousands of dollars per year on their healthcare costs – and have their very own cash-only primary care physician available to them 24-7 by phone, email, home visit, or office visit. The cash-only doc can afford to offer these conveniences because they are paid by the hour to do whatever the patient needs done, without forcing the relationship to conform to insurance billing codes. In fact, the physician saves a bundle on coding and billing fees – and can pass that on to the patients.”
I wondered about the outrageous costs of laboratory fees and radiology charges for people who don’t qualify for the insurance company negotiated rate. Dappen explained:
“My practice has negotiated similar rates with local labs and radiology groups. Screening tests and x-rays are very reasonable.”
I asked Dr. Dappen who uses his services.
“I see both ends of the spectrum. The high-powered executives who don’t have the time to wait in a doctor’s office and enjoy the convenience of handling things with me via phone or house call. For them, time is money, and by losing half a day or more traveling to a doctor’s office and waiting for their 15 minute slot, they might lose $5000 in billable work time. On the other end I see patients with no insurance or high deductible plans. They enjoy the same conveniences, and end up paying an average of $300/year for their healthcare. This is high quality care that they can afford.”
I guess the only thing preventing this model of healthcare from taking off is the courage of individuals to try something new. I myself have switched to a cash-only practice with a high deductible health insurance plan, and have saved myself thousands a year in the process. I love the convenience of knowing that my doctor has all my records in his EMR, I have his cell phone number, and he can renew my prescriptions with a simple email request. I can’t imagine why more people aren’t doing this.
Alan Dappen says, “They just have to wake up out of the Matrix.”
**For more in-depth coverage of the rising trend in cash-only practices, check out MedPage Today’s special report.**
March 18th, 2009 by AlanDappenMD in Primary Care Wednesdays
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The U.S. government finally has announced intentions to become involved in our $2.2 trillion healthcare system. Now everyone wants to say something. Most longtime players in healthcare indignantly rebut any new input and opinions with “How dare you! … You stay away from my holy cow of entitlements (insured patients), or salary (doctors), or bonuses (insurance companies), or profits (pharmaceutical companies), or the ability to sue (lawyers.)”
I join my voice to President Obama’s statement that the single most important problem to solve in our healthcare systems is cost. The tidal wave of catastrophe rushing towards America is the expenditure of healthcare dollars doubling every 7-10 years.
Few will argue against the ideal of universal health coverage, yet this noble ideal comes with an enormous price tag and many less than honorable behaviors by all players in the system. The wasted and misallocated money lost every year in healthcare makes Madoff’s Ponzi scheme look like child’s play, and yet it continues. We finally have awoken the dormant giant of politicians to do what no one else says they will do, and the government’s intervention in the form of healthcare reform seems imminent.
Doctors were captains of the healthcare system until 1980s. They were dethroned because health care costs had doubled every seven years since 1945. Then insurance companies gladly took the helm. Guess what? After 20 year of their leadership, the price of healthcare has continued to double on average of every 10 years. Now the government is positioned to step in and fix it.
Big Brother might “force” each of us healthcare players to be held accountable including all of us as patients. This fear of change leads to finger pointing, name calling, blaming, grandstanding, and claiming, “Oh the ridiculous price healthcare … it’s not my fault and I shouldn’t have to change or fix it.” Nothing could be further from the truth. We all have to fix healthcare, and never forget, it’s about the price.
How do we create a health care system that provides the widest access, the best bang for the buck, the fairest distribution of money, and inflates at the same speed as the rest of the economy?
For primary care, two pathways are clear: the career path or the professional practitioner path. With the career model, doctors can work for someone else (like Kaiser, Medicare, an insurance company, or a hospital), and can expect a salary and benefits. In return, these employers oversee and influence how career doctors do their jobs, their hours, their interactions with patients, how they communicate with patients, and often what medications should be prescribed. We have 20 years of experience with the “career pathway.” We allowed others to interfere in the doctor patient relationship, help us ”manage” our patients, and decide what’s “reimbursable.” The soul of our work and the trust of our patients evaporated. Many believe this pathway will spell the extinction of the primary care “specialist.”
The other pathway is the primary care doctor as a professional, with a mission that focuses on the patient not just for quality, but for trust and price, and following these key objectives:
- Restoring the soul and viability of the doctor patient relationship,
- Delivering the highest quality care, and
- Restoring a pricing integrity which reduces cost.
This professional primary care doctor will restore the patient-doctor relationship with a modern office that is mobile, can be reached anywhere and anytime, has virtually no staff, minimal overhead costs, transparent pricing, and is powered through a customized software that finds the patient chart, instantly looks up any pharmacy or radiology center, can contact any specialist, can instantly look at differentials, drug interactions, gets notifications when patients have something “due,” has a large number of patient education resources that can be emailed to the patient including articles from the medical literature and refereed internet sites that can educate patients, and does all the billing from the same platform the moment that the note is closed.
An individual’s day-to-day health is not “best managed” under third-party payers. We need insurance or government to manage expensive problems or catastrophe, like cancer, serious injuries or ongoing health problems. Yet sixty years of conditioning has left most unable to see the obvious: extract the day-to-day care cost from the insurance model and return these funds to all Americans (about $700 billion/year), stop holding the consumer hostage, make doctors compete again for the consumer on price, quality, knowledge, access, convenience, relationship — just like every other service industry. Finally, bring an end the $20 co-pay mentality for the patient and “the funnel” for the doctor.
This is possible, and is being done today with the practice I founded, doctokr Family Medicine, (www.doctokr.com). Our patients pay out-of-pocket for all the primary and urgent care healthcare services they receive. We charge on a transparent time-based fee basis, where five minutes of the doctor’s time costs around $25. Our patients can contact or see us anytime, day or night, and consult with us via phone, email, in our offices or by house calls, with over 50% of all of our patients’ healthcare issues being resolved by phone or email. About 75% of our patients pay less than $300 per year for all of their primary and urgent care needs. We’ve built a relationship with each patient and spend as much time as they want with us.
In the weeks ahead I invite all readers and colleagues to consider the road less traveled. Consider primary care doctors standing-up, reclaiming their profession, embracing and being embraced by the American population. And imagine happier patients and doctors, healthier patients and that the delivery of that care costs 50% less than now.
Until next week, I remain yours in primary care,
Alan Dappen, MD
