Ep. 31: A return to relationship medicine through direct primary care with Dr Stephen Schimpff
In this episode of Surviving Healthcare, you’ll hear about a topic of huge importance and excitement, one that can have an enormous impact on our healthcare system. I’m talking about direct primary care. My guest for this show is Dr. Stephen Schimpff.
Dr. Schimpff is a physician with tons of experience and insights into our healthcare system. He is internationally renowned as a cancer specialist and has held numerous leadership positions with the University of Maryland Medical System, one of the largest medical systems in the country and the world. He has authored a number of books about our healthcare system including the one we’ll be discussing today, Fixing The Primary Care Crisis.
Our discussion begins with the problem: physicians have too little time to spend with patients. Patients don’t feel like they’re getting proper care from their physician with the limited amount of time and physicians are extremely frustrated. Dr. Schimpff explains what direct primary care is, what it entails and why it gives both physicians and patients the time they need.
You’ll hear about the benefits of direct primary care. We talk about the importance of allowing the physician to spend more time on patient problems and lifestyles and not just pawn off patients to specialists or send them home with a prescription. We discuss the negatives that opponents bring up. You’ll see how paying your primary care physician directly is actually more cost-effective.
The next part of our discussion focuses on the dynamic among patients, doctors and insurance companies. The indirect relationship between you and your physician is a symptom of a big problem. Dr. Schimpff discusses how paying the doctor directly, called direct primary care, actually makes health care better and improves the doctor-patient relationship.
We then talk about the financial aspects of such an approach, wherein you take a less expensive, high-deductible insurance plan and buy a primary care membership and/or pay for each visit through a medical savings account, which could save you money on taxes, as well. We also talk about how many direct primary care physicians save their patients money on drugs.
The ideas in this podcast may seem counterintuitive, but when you hear this discussion, you may change your mind. Paying for your own primary care could means more time with your physician and higher quality care. It may even save you some money. The important thing to remember is it is something you can do immediately to improve the time and access to your physician. Listen and let us know what you think.
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