Specialists depend on the area – we have an orthopedic surgeon who does house calls and works only for cash, and has very reasonable rates. Your DPC doc often knows of those kinds of referrals in the area. For non-urgent surgeries, my favorite option is the Surgery Center of Oklahoma – they do great work and post their prices right on their web site, https://surgerycenterok.com/

You are right, the DPC monthly fees do not count towards your deductible, as it’s not ‘in network’ at all. Health insurances want your money to be going toward their providers, keeping it all in their system. There’s been discussion in legislation of at least being able to use your HSA accounts for your DPC membership fees – and some of my patients have been doing that for a while, anyway, semi-legally. Thanks for reading!

Every physician can be different in how they practice, but my impression is that concierge tends to be more expensive, and that patients can expect to have truly 24/7 access to their doc – as in, call in the middle of the night asking about a non-emergency. DPC doesn’t cost as much, but there’s also a level of restricting access to your doctor until reasonable hours of the day and night, taking a few days for turnaround on documents to be filled out or refills of meds to be placed, if that makes sense.

I would like to research this more but when Dr. Rachel says you should still have high deductible health insurance, do the DCP visits count towards the deductible? I am suspecting not. Either way, this is very intriguing. Thanks for sharing!!

What’s cool is that us doctors are just excited about DPC as you sound like you are :) We finally get to practice medicine the way we want to and care for folks properly!

I don’t think most docs are aware of DPC. Most are much more medicine-minded than business-minded (which makes sense) and so would rather hand the reigns over to some business guru and just do what they are good at (medicine). Which has led us to where we are – the business gurus have been taking advantage of the altruism of doctors to the extent that health insurance CEOs make $$$$. Just like most people, docs are afraid of making a switch into the unknown of DPC, away from the status quo. But it’s worth it! Talk to your local PCPs and feel free to give them my email address. Or better yet, the name Dr. Josh Umbehr, out of Wichita, who is a leading expert on DPC and super nice to boot.

Sounds like an ideal situation! It’s outrageous how much insurance charges for biopsies when they are so easy.

So glad to hear that :)