Direct Primary Care (DPC) is really so different from the sort of corporate medical practice that I spent the first decade of my career in (and that most patients are familiar with) that at times it’s hard to convey to prospective patients just how different their experience can be at an office like mine. So in keeping with the aphorism that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” I’ve decided to give a few brief vignettes in this post that I think better illustrate what I offer than any bullet-point list of services you’ll find elsewhere on my website.
For obvious reasons, the names and personal details of each of the following patients have been changed, but these are all real examples of patients I’ve taken care of here at Dr. Fischer, MD during these first few months since I’ve opened:
Genevieve was in an accident late one Friday evening and paged me. At a typical medical practice, when a patient calls the office after hours, their information will be paged to whichever doctor is covering the practice. This means that they will likely wait a while to receive a call back, and then speak to a doctor or nurse practitioner who has never met them before. And since that doctor is covering an entire office, they will be one of many people that doctor is speaking to that evening. Accordingly, all that will typically happen will be a quick conversation to make a determination about whether the patient needs to go to the emergency room, versus whether they can be seen in the office after the weekend.
But not so in DPC. All of my patients can easily reach me by phone or text off hours for an emergency, and unless I’m on vacation, they always get a call back from me personally. I called Genevieve back immediately and we spent half an hour on the phone, during which we were able to determine that she could hold off on going to the ER that night. The following morning we were able to get her in for some stat x-rays to make sure nothing was broken. Thus we saved her a long night in the emergency room and likely several hundred dollars in co-pays.
Kim is a middle aged woman whose last primary care doctor put her on Lipitor after determining that she had high cholesterol. But she was ambivalent about taking the medication after reading about possible side effects. After discussing it, we agreed to get a coronary artery calcium CT scan on her, which is a much more accurate test for determining long-term heart attack risk (I’ve previously discussed this test in a prior post – click here for further information). Fortunately, this showed no plaque buildup at all in her arteries, and thus we could confidently stop her statin, secure in the knowledge that doing so posed no risk to her long-term health.
David travels a lot for business, so getting to my office during normal hours can be difficult for him. No problem. I’m self-employed, and live a mile from my office, so I can be very flexible about scheduling, and we have done a few of his visits outside of normal hours, when it’s more convenient for him.
Ruth called me up one Sunday morning after injuring her knee while playing with her grandson. She was going to head over to urgent care, but since I was free at that moment, I instead told her to come right over to the office where I would meet her for a quick visit. Twenty minutes later, she walked out of my office with a diagnosis and treatment plan for her knee.
Robert is an elderly man with severe difficulty getting out of his house, so I do most of his visits as housecalls.
Ronald developed some symptoms this past winter that made him concerned he might have a particular type of cancer. He saw his primary care doctor who referred him to a specialist – who was planning to see him this coming September. That’s when he decided to switch to me. Within a week of becoming my patient, Ronald underwent lab work, an x-ray, a CT scan, and a procedure with a specialist, all of which fortunately ruled out cancer. He is now free to enjoy the rest of his summer, rather than worrying about what September may bring.
Mary is a middle aged woman who is very focused on staying healthy and aging well. Accordingly she already did a lot of running and yoga, didn’t smoke, and ate a mostly healthy diet low in processed foods, alcohol, or sugar. Using my Styku body composition scanner though, we were able to determine that her muscle mass was a bit low. We discussed doing a few sessions per week of strength training and adding a little more protein to her diet. When I saw her back recently, she had gained a few pounds of muscle on a repeat scan, had dropped some body fat, and reported feeling the best she had in many years.
The beauty of DPC is that I work directly for my patients, not for a large corporate entity nor for the insurance company that provides the reimbursements. Everything I provide my patients, from short wait times and quick responses to their concerns, to a more comprehensive and holistic approach to care that prioritizes prevention and wellness, is downstream of this simple fact.
