Health Benefits: Direct Primary Care Offers Cost Solutions To Employers
Hi, thank you for coming back for the latest edition of Beyond Primary Care’s blog- Health Benefits: Direct Primary Care Offers Cost Solutions To Employers. In Beyond Primary Care blogs we highlight healthcare news, advice for medical conditions, and how membership for care works! Beyond Primary Care is an insurance free, membership based family medicine clinic. Beyond Primary Care is the highest rated Direct Primary Care clinic serving patients in Ann Arbor and throughout Washtenaw, Livingston, and Wayne counties giving families and employers peace of mind about healthcare costs by providing affordable and accessible primary care services.
In this blog post, we want to educate our patients and any prospective businesses about us and ways we provide cost containment for you and your employees health.
Small Business Benefits Is Hard
Employers out there know how hard it is to hire and train employees. This is why retaining a reliable workforce is important. It’s all about investing in your staff and creating a safe and energizing environment so that your employees feel good about going to work. This benefit strategy is the key to achieving valuable employees that will improve the health and productivity of your business.
The current problem with employer sponsored health benefits is escalating health insurance premiums are driving employers to search for alternative healthcare solutions or to give up health benefits all-together. The problem with health insurance benefits is that the benefits aren’t designed by employers, doctors or the employees.
Would you fly in a plane that wasn’t built by an engineer? Would you enter a high-rise building that wasn’t designed by an architect?
If Americans are going to spend an average of $11,582 per person on healthcare every year, they not only want affordable care, they also want high quality treatments, convenient options, and a hassle-free experience. When employers focus on giving their employees choices based on value they will see their healthcare expenses trend downward year-after-year.
The Problem with the Health Insurance System
Imagine a healthcare system where:
Your health insurance advisor / broker made more money as your costs went up.
Your insurer made more money as your costs went up.
Your doctor made more money the sicker you got.
Your local hospital made more money the more surgeries you had.
The drug manufactures made more money for life saving medications you need.
Well, this is EXACTLY the system we have in the United States, all the incentives are backwards.
Many insurance companies spend a substantial portion of consumers' premium dollars on administrative costs and profits, including executive salaries, overhead, and marketing." (NOT on healthcare. Estimates are 26 cents of every dollar goes to actual care. The rest is going to admin, salaries and profit). Employers are seeing 20-30% increases every year in their health plans, and health insurers are counting not he fact that employers think it’s too complicated to do anything other than accept the status quo.
Besides doing more of the same, what is your employer based health plan doing to counter act each and every one of these perverse incentives?
Trading Health Insurance for Direct Primary Care
Utilizing direct primary care for the employee’s health needs will save a bundle while improving the quality of medical care. Direct Primary Care is a new way for employees and their families to receive primary care services for most of their healthcare needs. These direct primary care clinics - such as Beyond Primary Care-are operated by doctors who left the traditional ‘fee for service’ system where they were paid in a way contrary to patient interests and instead created a clinic that is in-lined with patient interests.
Most direct primary care clinics charge a reasonable monthly fee and that covers all your primary care including your preventive care, your sick care, and your diagnostic care. Direct Primary Care doctors spend more time with their patients that allows them to diagnose and treat you properly.
Wrap Around Care
A hybrid plan that offers direct primary care along with a health cost-sharing organizing can help insulate employees from big medical bills while still maintaining a lifeline for small employers accessing timely healthcare for employees. Health shares like Sedera, and others that are faith-based, have been around for decades. These health shares are membership-based, and charge members a monthly fee in exchange for paying bigger medical bills, including hospitalizations.
A Note For Brokers
Direct Primary Care has become a key enrollment strategy to fill the healthcare solutions gap. If you are new to the Direct Primary Care movement, the good news is that Direct Primary Care is an easy sell. Employees need accessible and personalized coverage, and employers are happy with how affordable it is. If you ignore Direct Primary Care during open enrollment, you are leaving thousands of revenue dollars for yourself on the table as Direct Primary Care is a key strategy
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - Buckminister Fuller
Educate Those Employers and Employees
If you think your business or you work for a place that would benefit from the services of Beyond Primary Care, send them a link to this post so that they can join the conversation. Many employers may have only a vague idea of what direct primary care is, believe it’s too expensive, and don’t understand how to introduce new benefits to employees who never had them before. Let’s change that!
Thank you for reading
Dr. Jeff O’Boyle with Beyond Primary Care
