Practitioners always need to decide how they’re going to get paid. Of course, if you’re in the fee-for-service world, your payment is inextricably linked to billing codes. But the goal is same for any doctor — garner maximum revenues with minimal costs while not compromising the quality of services. Let’s for now assume you haven’t transitioned to direct care. Your first option would be in-house billing.
December 16, 2013
December 14, 2013
ACA Cancels New York Creatives’ Coverage
Anemona Hartocollis wrote in The New York Times, “Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it.”
Touche. Get a lot of people to vote for something by promising universal benefits for all. Then fail to benefit not only the people you promised to help, but also the law’s supporters. This seems like solid politics.
New York developed an unusual, informal health insurance system where independent practitioners were able to get lower insurance rates through group plans. These were typically set up by their professional associations or chambers of commerce. These people were able to avoid the sky-high rates in New York’s individual insurance market, (historically among the most expensive in the country).
December 13, 2013
Is Health Care In One Place The Right Place?
After reading this post about the rollout of Verizon’s Converged Health Management platform, we started thinking about centralized healthcare data. If you guessed that we’re conflicted about it, then you know us well.
Med City News claims, “All-encompassing patient engagement solutions are inevitable.” But current concerns over health IT regulations and healthcare reform are apparently delaying implementation.
“Industry trends that are in the works are putting a burden on our customers,” said Julie Kling, Verizon’s director of product management, mobile health solutions. “Healthcare reform is having an impact.”
December 13, 2013
Direct Care Inspires New Generation Of Physician
Brian Gans is seeing family medicine in a new light. He shared his passion for direct primary care in a new blog post that’s making the rounds in our online community. This first sentence is simply prophetic. Brian writes, “When I first entered medical school, I was very attracted to family medicine as a discipline, but I wasn’t attracted to practicing in a model that limited me to less than 15 minutes of face time per patient…”
Seriously, how can we expect our nation’s current, and widening, doctor shortage to be abated when students are confronted with the grim reality of hamster wheel medicine? And don’t forget the red tape. It’s sticky, and will require the majority of med student’s future to offset. Brian, like many students, is aware that fee-for-service medicine requires 45 minutes of paperwork to get reimbursed for every 15 minutes of work. There’s little to no room for innovation in this type of environment.
December 12, 2013
ACA Homogeneity — Direct Primary Care Doc Closes Up Shop In Wisconsin
We’re disheartened to share the news that Dr. Schupp closed his Madison, WI-direct primary care facility last month. He told the DPC Journal Editor, Michael Tetreault, “I wanted to try something different [entrepreneurial] and had over 100 patients were interested in the first two-months of startup. I was able to cover expenses with just 40 patients.”
Ouch. It’s incredible to hear that Dr. Schupp managed to break even with just 40 patients enrolled. Schupp continued to tell Tetreault, though, that several factors determined his decision to discontinue operation… one of which included the uncertainty of prospective patients related to the Affordable Care Act.
December 11, 2013
NPR Visits ACA Prison Glitch. Gets Touche.
In the mood for some high brow hahas? Then you’ll want to read NPR’s “prison glitch” coverage. Have you experienced this malfunction yet? Wait, that would mean you were actually signing up on the Federal insurance exchange (jk). Either way, according to NPR, the Obama administration says it has patched hundreds of software bugs infecting the government’s health insurance website.
What’s the “prison glitch”? We’re glad you asked. Evidently, Martha Freeman of Pennsylvania encountered the bug while signing up for coverage for herself and her adult children. The insurance website asked for documentation of the children’s incarceration status. It’s worth noting that her kids have never been to prison.
Freeman figured she was “stuck in solitary,” says NPR, until she called a toll-free help line and found out she wasn’t alone. Others have been experiencing this bug, too.
We do have to hand it to NPR. Their tone is hilarious. “Stuck in solitary” is only the first of prison-themed puns in the article.
December 11, 2013
Student Discusses Atlas MD, Capitalism And The Free Market In Research Paper
We’re blessed to have been the thesis of Sam Jordan’s academic paper, “Medicine Shrugged.” Originally from Salina, Kansas, she’s now a freshman at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and is majoring in Economics. She included email correspondences with Dr. Josh as part of her sources to build a case for free market medicine. Texts from Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan and other intellectuals were cited alongside our personal experience.
Thanks to Sam, for letting us share her work with our supporters. We have to admit, we blushed when she compared us to Aluminum Company of America. ALCOA is known for its shining example of profit-maximization and price-minimization in Greenspan’s paper, “Trust.” It serves as a concise way of understanding our mission to cut the red tape. And yes, it’s true: we’re motivated to offer the best healthcare while making the most money possible. Sam had no hesitation in addressing that.
We’ve included the complete work below. Take a look. And if you’re interested in a digital copy of Sam’s paper, send us a line at hello[at]atlas.md …
December 10, 2013
Direct Care Has A Brand New Face In Philadelphia
R Health in Philly launched their version of direct care back in August. Mason Reiner, the founder and CEO of the bootstrapped healthcare startup, says “[I saw] an opportunity to help consumers cut down on healthcare costs through more meaningful patient interactions and 24-hour access through telehealth.”
Welcome to the “wild” side of primary care, R Health. Wild if only because we’re willing to take big risks to earn big rewards. Rewards like quality relationships with our patients, and in our case even tweets like this:
It's SO GREAT that my doctor will drop what he's doing on a Sunday morning to open his office to treat me! @AtlasMD is pretty special.
— Veronica Hill (@vrhill) November 24, 2013
December 8, 2013
More Cash Only News Coverage
So CBS News in Las Vegas aired a segment about MedLion a few weeks ago. You’ve probably heard us mention Dr Samir Qamar’s operation. He was originally a high-end concierge medical doctor, offering private, 24/7 service for the elite Pebble Beach Golf Resort. He charged his patients as much as $30,000 a month.
No worries, he is charging much less now. 70 bucks a month and a $10 copay. His model doesn’t include the house calls we do, and it is a little more expensive than what we’re offering here. That said, it takes all kinds to bring direct care and cash-only medicine to life. Every time a news segment’s telling our side of the healthcare story, we’ll call it a win. Part of us might want to argue with MedLion, “Oh, you’re charging too much.” But that’s petty. In fact, that type of pettiness would be great. Seriously, that dialogue will only happen when direct care goes mainstream. American healthcare would look a lot different then. We’d welcome a new set of problems to overcome, new battles to win. At least we’d have made it past today’s impasse, where insurance dictates patient care, and not the other way around.
December 8, 2013
The Prism Vision Of Direct Care
We came across a contributed post on Dr. James Diamond’s blog (Diamond is founder/CEO of Diamond Luxury Healthcare, a concierge medical network). The post is called “Is Concierge Medicine The Correct Choice For You?” and was submitted by contributor Paul Hsieh, MD. You’re well aware that our branch of concierge medicine, direct care, is carving out a niche where families, individuals, and businesses can get quality care for the most affordable rate possible. Although our society is made of many types of cars, some are more expensive than others, though. So it makes sense that our movement would see cost stratification.