We found the “Angry Therapist” while reading The Atlantic. Los Angeles therapist John Kim took an untraditional approach to building his practice. He acquired patients through a popular Tumblr blog. Writer Amanda Pelleschi says, “The site effectively harnesses the zeitgeist of internet culture – using memes and hashtags – and pairs it with a variety of classic psychological approaches (cognitive behavior therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, psychodynamic, etc), to bring psychotherapy to the millennial masses.” If you’re intrigued what this “zeitgeist” looks like, check out Kim’s website theangrytherapist.tumblr.com.
Category Archives: Announcements
July 31, 2013
July 31, 2013
Workforce.com Highlights Proactive Benefits Of Direct Care, Challenges Critics
Workforce.com published an article responding to critics who say that a subscription model doesn’t make sense for direct care. Naysayers suppose that patients stand to waste money if they don’t use the service, much like an unused gym membership. But physician and health care consultant Dr. Zubin Damania, who is working with online retailer Zappos (they’re considering offering a direct primary care clinic to Las Vegas-based employees), had this to say: “Would you use car insurance to get your oil changed or tires changed? I see primary care the same way.” Hmmm, sounds like an analogy we’ve been promoting for a while now.
July 30, 2013
A Direct Care Venture Capitalist Finds An Obamacare Silver Lining
We mentioned New Atlantic Ventures (NAV) earlier in the month. They’re an investment firm backing, amongst many endeavors, direct care entrepreneurs who are helping hospitals insure their own employees. Evidently we’re not the only ones who think Obamacare will increase demand for cash-only medicine. The Managing Partner of NAV, John Backus believes there is a silver lining to forcing states to open a health insurance market and offer price transparency, increased costs due to all the red tape. And with this increased cost will come demand for more affordable options. It turns out that direct care sans middleman is exactly that kind of option.
You can read John Backus’ complete op/ed on Huffington Post.
July 30, 2013
More Doctors Steer Clear of Medicare
And another doctor adopting “direct care” has gained mainstream media attention. Dr. Juliette Madrigal-Dersch is a physician in Marble Falls, Texas. She’s joined a growing number of doctors who choose to not accept payment from Medicare, Medicaid and private-insurance networks. The Wall Street Journal broke the story, saying, “Fewer American doctors are treating patients enrolled in the Medicare health program for seniors, reflecting frustration with its payment rates and pushback against mounting rules, according to health experts.” According to their research the number of doctors who opted out of Medicare last year, while still a small proportion of the nation’s health professionals, nearly tripled from three years earlier.
Check out the complete article (subscription required), or if you don’t feel like paying the news source, you can watch the ad-supported video segment.
July 28, 2013
A Tragicomic Irony: Pretending To Be Uninsured Might Save Patients Money
Dark Daily, our favorite watchdog publication, posted price comparisons between insured and uninsured patients. The numbers vary state to state, but the overall trend is that insured/Medicare patients are on average being charged a third of what uninsured patients are. This is a polar shift from the 1950s, when the poor and uninsured were charged the LOWEST rates of any patient. But there was also an ironic finding, steep cash discounts are being offered to patients who can pay for a service upfront. “[It was] suggested that when hospitals offer such deep discounts for paying cash, patients with high deductibles may be better off withholding their insurance information and paying the cash price.” This reminds us of a great quote by Richard Feynman, who says, “The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that’s most interesting.”
More Reading
“Hospitals Generally Charge Self-pay Patients Top Price for Care, but Some Providers Now Offer Deep Discounts for Patients Who Pay with Cash” | Dark Daily
July 28, 2013
LISTEN: Atlas MD Podcast, Ep. 3
The third taping of the Atlas MD podcast is live. You can stream it on iTunes. Drs. Josh and Doug focused this week on dispensing prescriptions from your own office. The team goes over everything you need to know — state legislation, permits, etc. They also offer some tips about what’s realistic to prescribe and what prescriptions you’ll want to coordinate with local pharmacies.
July 26, 2013
Doctors, Let’s Not Forget That Patients Are People
Have you checked out Mind The Gap yet? It’s a blog written by Stephen Wilkins, MPH. He’s interested in physician-patient communication that’s both personal and professional. His most recent post (Via Health Works Collective) addresses the issue of relevancy, something that you might immediately think, that? Oh, I know that. But the truth is, if you’ve been a healthcare professional running through what Michael Tetreault called the “hamster wheel” then you might have developed some bad communication habits.
July 25, 2013
Even Satisfied Patients Think Direct Care Is “Too Good To Be True”
Dave Chase continues his Forbes expose awakening business and industry types to the benefits of direct primary care (DPC). Now having interviewed more and more DPC consumers, the recurring theme to their comments is something like “it’s too good to be true.” That’s a concern we had. You have this straight-forward, commonsense approach that saves everyone time, cuts insurance expenditures, cuts downstream high-cost treatments and can make doctors more money… The people who experience it love it. But how do we convince other people that it’s really happening, when happy patients can’t even believe it?
July 24, 2013
Are Doctors Passing The Buck On Healthcare Costs?
Eryn Brown of the LA Times posted an article yesterday claiming that physicians are concerned about skyrocketing healthcare costs. However, according to survey results released earlier in the week, most doctors don’t believe they have a “major responsibility” for reducing those costs.
July 23, 2013
Six In 10 Physicians Believe Many Doctors Will Retire Earlier Than Predicted
A Deloitte survey reports that a majority of physicians believe many doctors will retire earlier than planned in the next one to three years. The same percentage think medical experts losing control of their clinics will jeopardize the healthcare administration. This group also believes strongly that implementation of the Affordable Health Care for America Act, or Obamacare, will push doctors out of the primary care industry altogether.
A spokeswoman for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Jane Orient, was not surprised by the results at all. In a recent WND article, it was reported that she said doctors already have started leaving the profession through early retirement. Of course, some will instead seek alternatives to what they see coming in the federal government’s takeover of health care. And that’s why we’ve been championing our model of direct care. Because the worst outcome is a doctor not practicing at all. And if that’s what an overregulated market will encourage, then we have a serious problem.