Personalized Healthcare, not Sickcare
A Direct Primary Care Practice
Run by a Catholic
Direct primary care eliminates third party payments by directly charging the patient a monthly fee. They do not bill your insurance.
This makes them different from concierge practices that charge you a monthly fee and still bill your insurance, leading to patients losing out on the benefits of eliminating fee-for-service all together. And what are some of those benefits?
Fee-for-service practices have to work at high patient volume. The uncertainty of when and how much they will be reimbursed by insurance companies pushes them to have high amounts of billed services to make sure they have enough revenue to meet their obligations.
To see that volume, they require large practice spaces and lobbies that can seat many patients, receptionists, multiple exam rooms, medical assistants, nurses, office managers, schedulers, billers, coders, etc. For these practices to see the volume they need, they have to incur high overhead costs. This increases the volume they need to see, a vicious cycle.
If a single doctor tried seeing 20 patients in an 8-hour work day alone, with no breaks, he can only spend at most an average of 24 minutes directly interacting with each patient. That does not include time spent on note-writing, coding, billing, responding to patient calls, coordinating care with other doctors, filling out paperwork like prior authorizations, managing the office, etc.
The next time you go to a fee-for-service practice, look at the ratio of non-doctors to doctors at the practice. Compare how much time you spend with people who are not your doctor to how much time you spend with your doctor. Do you feel like your doctor is your doctor?
With DPC, the fixed monthly fee allows the patient to know how much their health care will cost, avoids any surprise billing, and prevents the possibility that the patient is nickel-and-dimed by their doctor. The fixed monthly fee also allows the practice to function with a lower number of patients than a fee-for-service model, because they do not have that revenue uncertainty described above. This allows them to spend more time with their patients.
With DPC, your doctor is your doctor. The doctor is available for you to speak directly via email, phone, or text. Visit lengths and types can easily be adjusted to fit the needs of each patient. Care is customizable and personal.
non vivere bonum est, sed bene vivere.
It is not good just to live, but to live well.
The goal of this practice is the health of its patients.
I aspire to have my patients to be as healthy as possible, maximizing the health benefits of lifestyle interventions.
And changes in lifestyle should be the primary way of healing individuals and making them resilient in the long-term, especially in a world with chronic diseases that have risen due to modern lifestyles.
This takes a significant investment by the physician, of both time and effort, during the visit and in between visits. The DPC model of care allows me to take the time and put forth the effort to help you become healthier. Many physicians do not receive adequate training during their formal education on lifestyle-based medicine and do not have the time to educate themselves while on the job. Therefore, a patient who wants to focus on lifestyle-based medicine needs to find a physician who has a passion for it and prioritizes it.
The Core Tenets of Florida Low Carb Primary Care
Low-Carb As a Way to Health
This practice specializes in catering to the needs of those interested in therapeutic carbohydrate restriction, therapeutic nutritional ketosis, and elimination diets, like carnivore diets, to help treat disease processes, reduce their reliance on pharmaceuticals, especially when pharmaceuticals have failed them. These are not the only ways to become or stay healthy, but this practice seeks to help a growing population and underserved population, those interested in low-carb approaches to health.
Focus on Customized Preventative Care
With chronic diseases being driven by chronic issues in lifestyle, this must be the focus so to keep people healthy. Lifestyle medicine needs to be built around your life. This requires listening to the patient, customizing plans to their individual needs, attentive monitoring, fine tuning, and providing teaching that fits the patient's learning style.
Principles of Care Bound to Follow The Kingship of Christ
As a Catholic, I am bound to follow the rule of the Christ the King. The same goes for the medical care that I provide. Therefore, one can be confident that the care provided by this practice will not violate one's conscience, an important matter for our times. For more on the Kingship of Christ and its meaning, click here.