Dr. Jeff Gold shared this article from CNN with me. It’s called Why you should maintain a relationship with your primary care doctor and it’s all about how NOT seeing your doctor for a few years will get you dropped from the practice. Here’s a quote:

Though it is dismaying to learn you’ve been dropped from a physician’s practice because a few years have passed since your last visit, the approach isn’t uncommon. Exactly how widespread the experience is, no one can say. But specialists also do this.

The argument for dropping the occasional patient makes some sense. Since many primary care doctors have a waiting list of prospective patients, removing those they rarely see opens up patient slots and improves access for others.

“Most primary care practices are incredibly busy, in part due to pent-up demand due to covid,” said Dr. Russell Phillips, director of Harvard Medical School’s Center for Primary Care and a general internist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

“Even though continuity of care is important, if the patient hasn’t been in and we don’t know if they’re going to come in, it’s hard to leave space for them,” he said.

First, let me extoll the virtues of Direct Primary Care and how it relates to this article:

• If you are paying member then you NEVER get dropped.
• DPC docs don’t drop patients if they have a waiting list.
• DPC docs are not as busy because they saw patients during COVID.
• We always leave space for our patients.

Now, is there a time you may have to drop a patient who never comes in? RARELY. I know that we really wanted to see our patients yearly for their physicals and for them to check-in. I wanted to give them their money’s worth and felt bad if they never saw me. We would check the EMR and see who has been missing for a while and even ask them if they want to keep with us because they never use us. But it was always their choice.

Other than the above, we were like Motel 6:

 “I’m Doug Farrago for Forest DPC, and we’ll leave the light on for you.”

Lastly, you can read the rest of the article but it is the same experts who live in ivory towers and have their thumbs up their asses. They don’t recognize Direct Primary Care because it would put them out of a job as they would have nothing to pontificate about. This includes the AMA and the AAFP who really don’t support us.