Yes, this is another opinion, but I am gearing up for my keynote closing talking at the DPC Summit in less than two weeks and I am full of opinions. In my last big talk (2016), I warned that “others” are not going to be happy about DPC. I told you that the term would be compromised, bastardized, and hijacked. I was right. More and more, however, I am now seeing private equity getting way too excited about direct primary care. That is not good. Remember, VCs want 10x return of their money and they want it quickly. This means that these DINOs (DPC In Name Only) have to propagate and expand at a rapid rate. With that comes made-up terms that are started to appear. Here is one I keep seeing:
- Through value-based care, the Sana Care ecosystem of world-class providers, direct primary care and more, Sana is reducing the cost of high-quality care.
- While DPC practices are rapidly gaining traction, the industry is still on a journey to build an interconnected ecosystem that collectively outperforms the current FFS model. There’s no silver bullet solution to achieve this goal, but three specific steps can help us get there.
- Connecting the Direct Primary Care Ecosystem
- The underlying goal of Clover is to engender a more preemptive process in the health ecosystem where you can get ahead of the problem before it snowballs into a terrain where the total cost of care becomes overly prohibitive.
- “A direct primary care practice will add value to the local health care ecosystem by tackling one of the most pressing problems of our city: the lack of a comprehensive primary care system for the uninsured,” said Khator .
Ecosystem – a complex network or interconnected system.
Yeah, DPC is not that complex. It is the simplest and most unencumbered form of primary care.
Maybe what these companies mean by an ecosystem is a way of showing what they have to offer is as important as the DPC doctors and what they are doing.
Little hint: it isn’t.
I certainly appreciate the idea that the simple idea of DPC can get bastardized by bean counters and unsavory corporate marketing departments. However, I surely do not agree with the idea that DPC exists in some kind of secluded way, or that it should. Virtually every element in the system has a point of view based on the way the current system is configured. There are a multitude of examples. Patients, doctors, and employers all need to be educated about the new model relative to what they think they know about what currently works. Regulatory regimes, lobbyists, and lawyers are all policing and politicizing medical care–even to the point of abortion access and assisted suicide. Global supply chains for medical equipment, drugs and even local real estate all have out-sized impacts of how an DPC enterprise works and thrives. Even the concept of DPC itself only makes sense and is called into being because it is levering itself as a choice among and against mainstream alternatives.
The current system is under attack by the wonderfully nimble idea of the DPC model of care. As part of the fight, the DPC industry needs to leverage its core values and growing influence to deeply re-define the current system into an evolved version of healthcare deployment. Every interface involved with building and running a practice is necessarily a part of the medical ecosystem we have come to know. Every detail from the old system that is crumbling or obstructed needs a DPC direct replacement or choice pathway that allows for flow toward better care. The most apt comparison I can think of is how Sam Walton re-imagined retail in the 1960s thereby forcing historic changes we now consider normal.
The idea of DPC is simple, but in no universe can it exist outside of the medical ecosystem. Fundamentally, that is exactly why the idea has enormous power and potential.
Good points. Can’t agree to them all, however. And what others are trying to do is equate what they do and put on the same level as DPC. That is the goal of using the term ecosystem. They are not the same. They are not on the same level. And I never said that others in the medical industry don’t have value or that we can survive 100% on our own. So, I’ll stick with my post.