Direct Primary Care

 I'm excited. I finally went ahead and signed up for Direct Primary Care at Plum Health DPC. The Direct Primary Care model of health care is a monthly subscription (the amount is age-based), and doesn't accept insurance.

 

Switching insurance for my new job once again cost me my primary care doctor whose office was in the building where I used to work, and only sees employees there. As a software developer, it's normal for me to change jobs every couple of years. I've never had a primary care doctor for long.

 

I like contracting. My take-home pay is higher, but I no longer have good health insurance. I was going to be charged a thousand dollars for an ultrasound last week. I spent a week researching and designing another one of those fundraising campaigns I sometimes do, to propose to my hacker space that we buy an ultrasound machine for five thousand dollars.

Then I came to my senses and realized I could finally go through with signing up for a health care model which has always sounded very innovative to me. I'm going to pay $70 a month.

 

Medications are dispensed in the office, at cost. If it costs them pennies (which frequently happens), they charge you pennies. Labs or diagnostic scans are at cost! They knew a place to send me that will charge me an entirely reasonable copay for my ultrasound!

This morning, I went in for my intake interview in Corktown, only ten minutes from my house. While I was there I got my labs run, my COVID booster, tetanus shot, and flu shot! All in one visit without multiple different health facilities driving around to various suburbs!

 

I did not have to put up with exhausted and indifferent staff of the front desk and the insurance company phone bank. No playing messenger intermediary, waiting on the phone with insurance companies to tell them what the front desk was telling me about how they can't find my insurance... call back because I need a three letter code... oh, it's out of state insurance... None of that runaround.

You know how every time you go to any health care provider, you get a clipboard with a form where you are expected to have somehow memorized facts about yourself in detail? Like how many micrograms of vitamin D3 is in the supplement I take every morning? I can just text or email my doctor with whichever parts of it I forgot! "Oh yeah, the vitamin D3 I take every day is 50 mcg." Let me say that again: I can just ... text ... or email ... a doctor.

The best part was when they got busy all of a sudden. All at once, a bunch of people came in to get their COVID booster. My previous doctor's offices would have forgotten about me in the interview room for a half hour (my longest case was waiting for three hours). But at Plum Health, the doctor came back into the appointment room, and explained and apologized for the delay! I don't mind a delay, so long as it's treated like "this is not what normally happens". Keep in mind, it was a doctor who took ten seconds to tell me, the patient, that my time matters. Those weren't just a normal ten seconds, those were doctor seconds, which I am given to understand is worth... *does math on fingers*... half a bitcoin, or seventy bajillion united states money dollars.

 

My hope is to finally have a doctor who has known me and my medical history for a significant time.