Doctor Eaman's Future
Imagine a world where patients and their doctors help make decisions about their health - no middle man, no insurance hoops to jump through, no focus on computer check lists. Imagine instead of waiting an hour to see your doc for 5 minutes you wait 5 minutes (or no wait at all) to see your doctor for an hour! Imagine your doctor looks you in the eyes instead of at a computer screen. Imagine you get to actually reach your doctor when you call - not a third party phone bank. Imagine you can get in to see the doctor that KNOWS you that same day or the next day! Now imagine this only costs $50 a month for as much care as you need - no co-pays, no deductibles, no weird facility fees! Imagine no longer, because this thing is NOT too good to be true.
I chose Family Medicine to have relationships with patients, to spend the time needed to help them with their health issues and get to know more about their lives and their families. I can no longer, in any good conscience, say that the system I am working in reliably provides the kind of care my patients deserve. Patients wait 3 weeks to be seen in a 15 minute visit with a rushed doctor who may or may not have ever met them! What is that if not substandard care!? I used to joke that as a medical doctor my job was not to make medical decisions, it was to make recommendations to insurance companies who made the decisions. Well I found a way to be the kind of doctor I want to be.
In 2018 (hoping January) I will be opening my own Direct Primary Care medical practice.
Other folks have explained Direct Primary Care (or DPC) better than I could. So please allow me to provide some links to articles and resources (and a short video) that may help you understand what I'm doing.
1. Recent articles highlighting similar practices in Oregon and Texas.
2. Here you can locate some practices across the US that are already up and running.
3. What my medical association has to say about it.
4. A Medical Economics article that talks about more nitty gritty details.
5. But isn't this "Concierge" Care? NO! And also, NO!
6. An NBC TV News bit.
More to come later!
