The Orlando Sentinel reported a story showing just how important the doctor-patient relationship is and why Direct Primary Care clearly has the advantage over the industrialized healthcare system of today.

Elaine Parker, pictured above and President of the Job Creators Network Foundation, recently experienced just how important the direct doctor-patient relationship is. She asked her longtime physician for a breast ultrasound in addition to her annual mammogram to help detect early cancer. She states:

It should have been an easy request to fulfill, considering my grandmother, mother, and sister had all fought breast cancer. While my grandmother survived, my mother did not. My sister beat breast cancer only to have lung cancer take her life this past February.

Unfortunately, due the constraints of the bureaucracy of the industrialized healthcare system of today, there was going to be a six month delay in getting that scheduled.

Based on her family history, Elaine knew time was of the essence, and through her work at the Job Creators Network Foundation and its advocacy for free-market health-care reform, she had studied direct primary care. So, decided to give it a try.

Elaine’s first visit to her Direct Primary Care doctor was an hour-long visit, not a fifteen minute appointment she was getting at her other physician. After she discussed her fears of her family history, her new DPC doctor agreed she should have an ultrasound and genetic testing. Although a cyst found during the ultrasound appeared at first glance to be benign, she tested positive for the cancer-causing gene that three generations of women in her family had most likely carried. According to my new doctor, my impending cancer diagnosis was not a matter of “if” but “when.”

The decision to have a double mastectomy came quickly and easily for Elaine, thus reducing the risk of breast cancer by 95 percent before her previous doctor, locked into an insurance-driven system, could have even gotten an ultrasound scheduled.

Through her very personal experience with Direct Primary Care, Elaine believes that:

My story is proof that there is a better way. We must put patients back at the center of American health care. Congress should do all it can to get out of the way so more people can rediscover the life-saving value of a doctor-patient relationship.