May 12, 2014
High-deductible health plans appeared after legislation was passed in 2003 that required persons opening a health savings account to enroll in a high-deductible plan. They gained prominence recently as employers watched their own healthcare spending skyrocket.
And in 2013, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that healthcare spending had grown at a record low pace from 2009 to 2011.
However, in this new HSA environment, practices need to think more like a business.
May 7, 2014
In the fee-for-service world, like the real world, there is an annual cycle. And, of course, there are seasons.
You know “flu season,” “poison ivy season,” and maybe even “Lyme disease season”.
But there is also a season that has little to do with medicine and everything to do with a broken payment system.
March 13, 2014
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:
July 31, 2013
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.
July 17, 2013
So we came across yet another article documenting direct care success. It’s practically overwhelming hearing all this good news, especially considering that our grassroots movement is producing practically no published stories of outright failure. Granted, running a business is challenging. And it doesn’t always work out. But, in the case of Dr. Usher, a former Mayo Clinic primary care physician, he left the insurance trap and found plenty of upsides. Dr. Usher is satisfied because he can keep his prices and overhead low and spend more time with patients. “We don’t have to mill them through,” he says. He also believes a retainer-based model, rather than strictly direct pay, might possibly earn his practice a more steady stream of income.