First part in a series.
We started practicing direct care because we knew there were major problems with American Healthcare. So what’s wrong with our profit-maximizing system. For starters, here’s five startling realities of our healthcare model:
Author Archives: AtlasMD
March 21, 2014
March 20, 2014
Direct Care Outsmarts The “Big Three” Financial Barriers To Opening A Private Practice.
Traditionally, there are three financial barriers to starting your practice — the office, the technology and the management. But Atlas Md-style of direct care addresses each of them.
March 20, 2014
Still Think Health Coverage Is Health Care? Ask Obamacare Enrollees Who Can’t Find A Doctor.
Terri Durheim and her family now have health insurance, courtesy of Obamacare. But what they don’t have are local doctors and hospitals who will take it.
March 19, 2014
Oklahoma, Meet Your New Direct Care Practitioner, Dr. Davenport.
Great news! Edmond, Oklahoma will have local access to direct care on April 1. That’ll be the day Doctor Jeffrey Davenport, M.D. opens his new practice, One Focus Medical. He is offering Atlas MD-style of primary care: membership-based, insurance-free, and destined to save patients money.
March 19, 2014
ICD-10 Billing Codes Cover Everything That Happens On And Off The Silver Screen
You know this guy, right? Rapper-turned-actor Will Smith is also the only person who’s tried to kill himself with a jellyfish.
You’ve heard the stories about ICD-10 billing codes covering everything under the sun — suicide via jellyfish included. Well, in case you’re wondering where the idea came to kill yourself with a tentacular sea creature, look no further, we found the inspiration — Hollywood.
March 18, 2014
Fee-For-Service Private Practices Face Dark Times.
Dr. Tracy Ragland, 46, an independent primary care physician, is anxious about the future of her small practice. The law is bringing new regulations and payment rates that she says squeeze self-employed doctors out of even practicing medicine. She cherishes the autonomy of private practice and speaks darkly of the rush of independent physicians into hospital networks, which she sees as growing monopolies.
“The possibility of not being able to survive in a private practice, especially primary care, is very real,” she said.
March 17, 2014
Atlas MD Is Neck In Neck For CMT’s Most Influential Brand In Cash-Only Medicine
Do you believe in the power of Atlas MD-style direct care to address our ailing healthcare system? Affordable subscriptions, unlimited visits, 24/7 doctor access, wholesale prescriptions — some as low as pennies per pill — and discounted labs, and the reality of switching to a wrap-around insurance plan… Then take the CMT survey here.
March 17, 2014
It’s Hard To Get Burnt Out On Medicine When A Patient Brings You These
Mmmm, they’re even St. Patty’s Day-themed. See, this is what happens when you cut the red tape — happy patients, happy doctors, and donuts.
March 14, 2014
Denial, Deception, And Health Insurance’s High Premiums.
We all know insurance companies like to insert themselves into just about every aspect of health care. Many insurance plans make you go to an approved doctor at an approved hospital for approved procedures and take approved drugs. Fee-for-service docs don’t have much say here. They’ve handed all this control to insurance companies and the insurance companies use it, they say, to control their own costs. But is that all they use it for?
March 13, 2014
Myth Buster, Cash-Only Medicine Edition
Some people have a knee-jerk reaction when asked about direct primary care: “Only the rich can afford direct primary care” and the end result will be “fewer doctors seeing fewer patients”. These statements are true but ironically only in context with the current dysfunctional system that impairs quality by reducing actual patient care time. It’s this patient mill mentality that drives doctors away from a career in primary care, and further exacerbates the problem. Its leads to efficiency delusions like Meaningful Use Stage 2, and ICD-10 billing codes and fast-talking EMR vendors which all to the red tape that makes healthcare so needlessly expensive.
The current insurance-driven primary care system is underfunded and overburdened and gives poorer quality care than a direct care system would. The top 9 conniptions about direct care are as follows: