C-ville Weekly recently featured the growth of Direct Primary Care in the Charlottesville community. Here are some of the highlights:
Dr. Rebecca Downey of Charlottesville Direct Primary Care is board-certified in Family Medicine. She is a strong believer in Primary Care as a collaboration between physician and patient. Her goal is to share her 26 years of practice experience to help guide and empower patients in their decision-making journey. She is happy to now be practicing in the DPC model.
Charlottesville is a very educated community, and a lot of people want complex answers to questions about their health, not pat instructions like: ‘You have diabetes, take this pill. My patients love that they feel cared for and that things get done in a timely manner in so many ways. I really get to know about my patients’ lives—I hear about their families, struggles, and successes—which makes it a really special way of doing business.
Dr. Lily Hargrove, owner of Ivy Family Medicine, is often called the Charlottesville-area’s “pioneer” of DPC. Hargrove worked for UVA and Crozet Family Medicine before leaving to start her solo practice in 2011, and was an insurance-accepting doctor until 2014. Eventually, she found that the amount of paperwork that was required of me was overwhelming and she then decided upon opening her own DPC practice.
The need for accessible health care is horrifying. It takes some people six to nine months to find a primary care doctor, and so many people are driven to get a decent general physician. Sure, primary care is not as glamorous as some medical specialties—we’re not doing dramatic surgery or anything, we just want to keep people from getting sick.
Dr. Denise Annie Way, owner of Skyline Family Medicine, says that the main reason she practices in the DPC model is that she wants health care to be more equitable and affordable for patients. Dr. Denise Annie Way, MD, MS, F.A.A.F.P., is a Board-Certified family medicine doctor with 20 years of medical practice experience caring for patients. She is dedicated to providing high quality, patient centered, holistic care to each one of her patients regardless of race, religion, socio-economic status, gender identity, or sexuality.
With traditional fee-for-service medicine, you are always rushed and the quality of your work suffers; patients are on a conveyor belt. Doctors have a very limited amount of time for each visit, some are limited to five minutes, and what we can address falls within a narrow dimension. In DPC, a patient pays their doctor a low monthly fee and in return, builds a long-lasting relationship with their doctor while having the convenience of accessible care. I was unhappy in medicine for years, and practicing as a DPC makes me happy.
Also practicing DPC in Charlottesville, is Dr. Claire Veber of Mount Pleasant Family Medicine. Dr. Veber is a Board Certified family physician in Charlottesville, VA. She grew up in Mount Pleasant, SC, near Charleston, and she earned her undergraduate degree at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC, and her medical doctorate from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Her love for family medicine and Charlottesville drew her there in 2003 for residency training, and she completed her family medicine residency at the University of Virginia in 2006.
In the past three to five years, direct primary care has become a real movement, and is taking us in the right direction. For the physician, it offers a much better quality of life—traditional doctors are seeing a giant number of patients—20 to 30 a day. This stress makes patients feel rushed, doctors feel rushed, you could easily miss something important in an exam.
It is wonderful to see how a community of DPC practices is thriving and supporting each other in Charlottesville, VA. Let’s hope this trend continues to spread across the country.