Should You Start a Direct Primary Care Practice?

Posted on by

About 8 years ago as we were launching the brand-new DPC Alliance, I had a fun day trip with the brilliant Dr. Allison Edwards. (I couldn’t find a picture of us at the lecture, but I did find a very old picture of us posing at her clinic in Kansas City from about that time.) The two of us had been invited to speak about DPC to the first 2 classes at a med school in northeast Missouri. I was glad to have her company, because it is a long 3 hour drive, 2 lanes almost all the way.  As we drove back toward Kansas City, to kill time we attempted to think up fun social media content for the Alliance.

One of my favorite recurring gags/segments to write for the Placebo Journal was a clever idea that Doug came up with called the “Algorithm of Reality.”  It was a take on an all-too-easy trope: doctors are hypocrites. In this version of the recurring motif, we basically poked fun at how doctors often do things they know go against the current guidelines/algorithms. (For instance, no matter how obvious it is that the patient’s symptoms are a viral URI, if you follow the algorithm, you end up prescribing antibiotics one way or another.)

So I came up with the idea that we could write an algorithm of reality that potential DPC doctors could follow to discern whether or not they were a good fit for DPC. Allison both contributed and drew out the rough draft as I drove, and this was the final product. It is as accurate and relevant today as it was 8+ years ago (and in my extraordinarily biased opinion, hilarious).

Even though it’s designed to make you laugh, like most comedy, it is based on serious themes that deserve discussion even when that discussion is not easy. It’s not easy to straight-up tell somebody they have a personality disorder or zero business sense, etc.. But these are things people need to know! Enjoy!

should_i_start_a_dpc__algorithm_of_realityDownload

3

About Vance Lassey, MD

Dr. Lassey earned his medical degree from the University of Kansas School of Medicine and completed his residency at the Smoky Hill Family Medicine Program, where he served as the chief resident. He went on to practice rural inpatient, outpatient, emergency room, and obstetric care, in Holton, Kansas. He found the calling he loved to have been hijacked by middlemen. Stuck in a broken system, mired in bureaucracy, clicking boxes, coding, not seeing his family, and hearing patients complain bitterly about medical costs he had no ability to control, Direct Primary Care (DPC) became the solution for him, his family, and his patients. He is passionate about restoring the physician-patient relationship, bringing transparency and sanity to medical costs, and advises physicians around the country on how to get out of the FFS system. He serves as an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, is the recipient of numerous clinical and teaching awards, and is a founding member and the past President of the Direct Primary Care Alliance.