Sometimes defensive backs get suckered into a fake by the wide receiver and then blow the coverage. I did the same thing when reading the article on Vermont’s primary care problem. My apologies. Somehow I got distracted by an ad or something and didn’t go down far enough (insert your favorite Michael Scott line here).
Anyway, here are some highlights:
But what if there were a way to have both a consistent revenue stream and the freedom to spend more time with each patient?
That’s the driving question behind what’s known as “direct primary care,” a relatively new model of medicine that allows physicians to avoid the more frustrating aspects of traditional health care — insurance paperwork and overloaded schedules — and instead focus on patients.
And this:
Dr. Marian Bouchard runs Fiddlehead Family Health Care in Bristol, a direct primary care office. It’s her second stint in private practice after spending the last eight years at a Federally Qualified Health Center, a model of primary care championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and subsidized by the federal government, to care for underserved populations.
Bouchard also argues that the model might actually keep some doctors in private practice, because it gives burned-out doctors a chance to find joy in their work again. “People are retiring because they have had it,” she said. “If you’re a family doctor and you’ve devoted your life to training to do this, there’s a lot of you that’s in this … You don’t stop painting if you’re a painter, right?”
So, I do want to give the journalist credit for mentioning DPC. I also want to shake all the family docs who are resistant to making the move because of some oath they never took. “Thou shall always work within the insurance model.” It’s time to move on from it.