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March 6, 2025 7 mins

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Direct primary care is revolutionizing the way we think about healthcare, emphasizing quality and accessibility. Justin discusses the benefits of the membership model and the recent legislative support that could expand access to this model.

• Direct primary care centers the patient-physician relationship 
• Emphasis on quality care over quantity 
• New legislation could allow HSAs to fund membership fees 

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Questions? Just ask!

Music by Alex Lambert.

Contact Justin via text 740-525-5259 or via email JFutrell@TrueNorthCompanies.com

I welcome the opportunity to hear your feedback from this episode!

Thanks again to my musically gifted friend Alex Lambert for the music. Also thanks to Kevin Asehan for the edits.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another Tuesday Morning with Justin.
I'm Justin Futrell, benefitAdvisor at True North Companies,
and today we're going to talkabout direct primary care.
Have you heard of it?
Think about concierge medicine.
That's a term sometimes peopleuse.
Direct primary care is aninnovative healthcare model

(00:24):
where you emphasize thepatient-physician relationship.
Also, there's a membership fee.
It's known for quality care andto be very accessible.
So let's just take a moment totalk about each.
As you think about thepatient-physician relationship,

(00:46):
there are so many doctors andnurses who went into healthcare
in order to help people andbuild relationships and make
people healthier and be able toaddress whatever they're going
through the challenge, theproblem in our current
healthcare landscape is thathospitals and insurance

(01:09):
companies drive so much of thebehavior of those providers.
So, for example, I have afriend who's a nurse and was
asked, strongly recommended, tonot spend more than seven and a
half minutes per patient beforemoving on to the next one.

(01:30):
Of course, as you can imagine,the main driver is this is a
for-profit health system, oreven if it's a not-for-profit
health system, but they'retrying to maximize the amount of
revenue they can drive in andso the patient-physician
relationship has really becomehindered over the years.

(01:51):
I know I can personally tellyou that I started getting
frustrated when I couldn't booka primary care doctor
appointment for six weeks.
That seems insane.
Has that ever happened to you?
Now?
Next, membership fee.
So what is this model?

(02:12):
Well, imagine like Netflix nomatter how much or how little
you watch Netflix, you pay yourflat subscription each month.
Same thing Imagine if you pay afee and no matter how much or
how little you use health carethat month, you've got the
subscription.
Now some people think, well, ifI don't really use the doctor,

(02:34):
maybe it's not worth it.
Well, I can tell you, that'swho I was.
I was in that bucket of peopleand what I found was that we go
to the next point of qualitycare and accessible care.
That's where it drives valuefor me personally.
Quality care Well, you'regetting, since you get to spend

(03:02):
more time with your provider.
You get a better scope ofwhat's going on with you now and
even conversations like hey,what do you want to work on in
the future and can we helpprovide resources for that?
And so a really good example iswith accessibility and quality
care.
When it was flu season, camedown with a bug, didn't know
what it was exactly, and we justgot like a two-page outline of

(03:23):
almost everything.
It could be based on thesymptoms.
Like a two-page outline ofalmost everything.
It could be based on thesymptoms.
So, while we didn't get inuntil the next day so a one-day
turnaround time for anappointment we had ammo for how
to get through that next 24hours.
That compares to going to anurgent care seeing someone that
you'll never see again versusactually building a relationship

(03:46):
with a physician.
Now, other things that peoplelike accessibility, being able
to pick up the phone andactually talk to someone.
Some direct primary carefacilities will allow texting or
emailing.
They're all a little different,as you can appreciate.
So why are we talking aboutdirect primary care today?
Well, for one, the majority ofacute care and preventative care

(04:12):
.
So think all of the smallthings that happen throughout a
year to any given person.
Set aside the big catastrophicknee surgeries and heart attacks
.
But all of the small things,the majority of care I think
people argue whether it's 70 or80% can be treated by direct

(04:34):
primary care.
But since so many small claimshappen throughout the year,
there are a lot of employers whoare embedding direct primary
care into theiremployer-sponsored health plan.
By doing that, they're reducingthe cost of insurance.
So if the math works out andyou can reduce your insurance

(04:55):
costs and embed direct primarycare, why wouldn't you do it
right?
It's better value for yourpeople.
Now I'm bringing this up todaybecause there's a new house bill
that would expand healthsavings accounts to help workers
pay for direct primary care, inother words, this membership

(05:16):
fee that we talked about.
Imagine if you could use yourhealth savings account money,
your pre-tax dollars, to alsopay for your membership fee.
That would be huge.
Now, this isn't a new thing.
Direct primary care andspecifically, bills around
direct primary care, have beentrying to be passed for a decade

(05:39):
.
2015 was the first introductionto legislation for something
like this.
So then the question question Iask is why now?
Why do we think it willactually pass through the House
and the Senate now?
Well, we have a bipartisan listof co-sponsors on the bill, and
Senator Bill Cassidy out ofLouisiana is the chairman of the

(06:03):
Senate Health, labor andPensions Committee, one of the
committees which hasjurisdiction over health care
legislation.
That's important because BillCassidy has historically been a
major advocate for bills such asthis, so there's a really good
chance that one.

(06:24):
If you haven't heard aboutdirect primary care.
You will soon, in addition tojust myself right now.
And two, there's a good chancethat we'll be able to use health
savings accounts to help payfor a membership fee, which is
great, because why wouldn't wewant better quality care and

(06:45):
more accessible healthcare?
All right, gang, until nextweek.
If you like the show, go aheadand hit subscribe and give a
five star review.
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