"We have gained extensive experience seeing and treating patients throughout our respective careers. Moreover, as a couple with young children, we are often patients ourselves. So we are familiar with having to wait to be seen, and the short visits with primary care doctors. We too have been sent on a “medical merry-go-round” (being sent for tests, labs, radiology, and specialists). On many such occasions, they could have diagnosed and treated the problem if they had spent more time with us. We understand intimately what the expectations of both patients and doctors are in terms of quality of care. In spite of this awareness, we still found it difficult, as physicians, to meet our expectations, as patients. The disconnect is primarily due to the conventional fee-for-service model to compensate primary care, which invites shorter appointments, reduces accessibility, and turns most practices into volume businesses. The expenses associated with the fee for service model (e.g. spending countless hours in billing the insurance payers and other administrative tasks) are enormous. Therefore, doctors are under pressure to take on an ever-increasing number of patients. This pressure increases the difficulty for patients to get an appointment when they need one and decreases the amount of time they have to talk to their doctor during an appointment. We are of the opinion that fee for service compensation in primary care does not work. We would like the value proposition of our services to be the basis of our compensation. Consequently, we decided to join the “Primary Care Revolution” by embracing a Direct Primary Care model. We offer primary care services for a monthly fee. Because we no longer have to spend time and money in complex billing procedures and other similar administrative tasks, we can keep our patient census smaller. We benefit because we do what we love and are trained to do – practice top quality medicine, one patient at a time. You can see us whenever and for as long as you need us. You will never be just a name or procedure code. This model means excellent care at a reasonable cost."
