How my life changed: transitioning to direct primary care

[FamilymedMD]

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This is one of a series of articles in Medical Economics by Rob Lamberts MD, an IM/Peds physician in Georgia:

How my life changed: transitioning to direct primary care

There is a lot of support available now both online and in almost all states for physicians considering DPC.

DPC Alliance
DPC Frontier

Disclaimer- I'm very biased. I've had my own DPC for four years now.

 

[Sushirolls]

I've interacted with various IM/FM, and even Peds who definitely needed to make the switch to save their sanity. Sadly, so many, just continued the inertia of the devil they knew.

I wished I liked primary care more than psychiatry back in the med school days. Would have loved to bring the DPC dream I had come to life.

 

[Sushirolls]

FamilymedMD, I've thought at times how it would be nice to share an office with a DPC primary care doc.

Ever think about what it would like for a psych and DPC to pair up or would it simply be a shared office space?

 

[clinical_psydoc]

FamilymedMD, I've thought at times how it would be nice to share an office with a DPC primary care doc.

Ever think about what it would like for a psych and DPC to pair up or would it simply be a shared office space?

That’s a very interesting idea to bring up. I work in a pediatric primary care clinic with 7 physicians and I am the only psychologist there. I think the patients benefit from having both their PCP and psychologist colocated.

 

[FamilymedMD]

The Air Force was big on having psych and primary care share space so I got spoiled early in my career with easy access, at least curbside, to psychiatry consults. My traditional private practice also had a psychiatrist in our multispecialty group but getting enough patients for a cash based psychiatrist was difficult in our rural area despite very long waits for Medicaid/Medicare/insurance paid psychiatrists. Direct care works well for blue collar, working class patients but psych is very labor intensive for the provider and many psych patients rely on Medicaid/Medicare so the economics can be a challenge in some areas.

It should work in many rural areas if you work part-time and can build it slowly, work with employer sponsored memberships (employers are getting screwed royally by the current system) or live close enough to a big population base to draw from that. I believe some of the docs at Directory — DPC Alliance are doing this already.

 

[KeikoTanaka]

How much freedom do you have in your week to week schedule? Can you do like 3 12's or 4 10s?

How do you set your hours?

How do you take vacations? Do you have to bring your phone?

Such an interesting concept... I just hope it won't be doomed by M4A 🙁

 

[VA Hopeful Dr]

How much freedom do you have in your week to week schedule? Can you do like 3 12's or 4 10s?

How do you set your hours?

How do you take vacations? Do you have to bring your phone?

Such an interesting concept... I just hope it won't be doomed by M4A 🙁

You can do weird hours but keep in mind patients are paying cash for access. They won't like only being able to see you 3 days per week, for example.

My hours were 9-5 M-F.

If you're solo practice vacation either means bringing your phone or arranging some kind of coverage. That's easy if there is another DPC doctor in the area, trickier otherwise.

 

[Prehealth1011]

You can do weird hours but keep in mind patients are paying cash for access. They won't like only being able to see you 3 days per week, for example.

My hours were 9-5 M-F.

If you're solo practice vacation either means bringing your phone or arranging some kind of coverage. That's easy if there is another DPC doctor in the area, trickier otherwise.

Are you not doing DPC anymore?

 

[VA Hopeful Dr]

Are you not doing DPC anymore?

Nope, sold it 2 years ago