Direct Primary Care (DPC)
Healthcare is no longer meeting the needs of the people
Medicine has existed for a long time. Even recently, it involved getting to know the whole person and being available for the long term. Slowly over the past few decades, bureaucracy has infiltrated medicine. The doctor-patient relationship has become secondary. Medicine has become healthcare which is now just an enormous economic engine. Systems have replaced the personal doctor-patient relationship into a business transaction called healthcare. Direct Primary Care brings back medicine.
We want to provide accessible and affordable healthcare that is transparent. Creating an environment that allows people to feel comfortable discussing their concerns without feeling rushed. DPC gives people an opportunity to have a medical home which involves continuity of care including fewer barriers to access care.
Modern healthcare can do amazing things. Unfortunately, the cost has grown out of control. Medical bankruptcy is the leading cause of bankruptcy. Medical bureaucracy has grown exponentially contributing to the skyrocketing costs.
Cascade primary care focuses on only having the needed bureaucracy to give the best care possible. We spend more time taking care of you then clicking boxes on the computer. We give you the care you need, not the care dictated by systems and insurance companies. The focus will be to concentrate on prevention instead of just treatment. We would rather prevent diabetes and hypertension than diagnose those diseases. There are many things that can be done to reduce the burden of disease and medications.
Purpose of Direct Primary Care
Improving the experience of patient and physician
*Longer visit time
*Ability to have more than one concern dealt with in one visit
*More accessibility and potential for same day visits
*Long term relationship with a physician and not having to repeat the same story to a different provider every time one visits a clinic
Lowering the cost of healthcare
*Having affordable visits
*Reducing unneeded bureaucracy
*Transparent pricing and costs: knowing the cost of your healthcare upfront.
*Study showed people seeing an outside physician were 66% more likely to visit an emergency room within seven days than people having a telemedicine visit with their own physician
*Using a Direct Primary Care Clinic can save up to 20% of total cost of care for businesses
Physicians feel healthcare has lost its way and needs change
As UnitedHealth has acquired multiple pieces of the healthcare industry, they have “transformed medicine in communities across the country into an assembly line that treats millions of patients as products to be monetized.”
UnitedHealth physicians reveal that once the company takes over, physicians are pressured to spend less time with patients and document questionable diagnoses that increase payments.” More than a dozen former doctors and employees from seven different practices nationwide described how UnitedHealth pushed its clinicians to document as many ailments as they could by offering bonuses or reviewing the performance of those who were not coding as much as their peers.” “Medicare Advantage insurers have gamed the system by excessively coding their members, resulting in massive overpayments to the companies.” According to STAT, “Doctors said that UnitedHealth medical directors and administrators pressured them to increase codes for a variety of different ailments, even if they thought those codes didn’t fit patients’ conditions.”
“We were not truly caring for patients anymore…We were just micromanaging their care to bring in money. It just felt so unconscionable.” – Dr. Susan Baumgaertel, an internal medicine physician in Seattle
Reason physicians are moving to the insurance free model:
Nicole Hemke, M.D. “Even more today than five years ago, people are unhappy with their health care experience. The insurance keeps getting more expensive, and the care you actually receive goes down.” Direct Primary Care addresses these issues.
Daniel Paull, M.D. “More time is spent on administrative garbage that actually treating patients. This is because all of the hoops that are required in order for health insurance companies to agree to pay.
Businesses of all sizes are feeling the weight of rising premiums
Health care has been one of the fastest-growing segments of the economy, rising from $2.6 trillion in 2010 to $4.1 trillion in 2020—at which point it represented nearly 20 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. According to the 2022 Kaiser Family Foundation Employer Health Benefits Survey, individual coverage premiums rose 58 percent, from an average of $5,049 annually in 2010 to $7,911 in 2022. Over the same period, family coverage premiums rose more than 63 percent, from $13,770 to $22,463. Put another way, the annual premium for individual coverage has risen more than $225 per year on average, and family coverage has risen more than $700 per year on average from 2010 to 2022.
When employers pay more in health insurance premiums and care, there is less money for salaries and more employees.