Ahem, indeed!
The thrust of the vox.com article cited by Dr. Edwards is that primary care physicians are losing in-person visits and telemedicine visits return fewer dollars. It’s key sentence: “Doctors and other health care providers have seen a precipitous drop in the routine visits they depend on for revenue, and experts fear many offices will have to close.”
But the same pandemic constraints that have lead FFS docs away from in-person medicine have served to make the reality of FFS practivce and DPC practice more similar, not less.
How often do we hear DPC advocates and their fellow travelers mention that some of the rest of us confuse “insurance” with “access”? From a patient’s perspective, the current “access” problem is the result of social distancing, not payment model.
DPC docs have long relied heavily on patients perceiving exceptional value in frequent, lengthy, face to face visits. That perception paves the way for charging hefty fees on a subscription basis, month after month, visits or no visits, so that in-depth service is there more-or-less on demand. When DPC shifts its mix away from in person visits, patient perception of DPC value will surely fall.
Notwithstanding the difference in payment model, revenue of both FFS and DPC medicine will reflect a similar, pandemic-constrained mix of in-person visits and telemedicine. I can’t imagine what makes Dr. Edwards think DPC revenues will not take comparable hit, if slightly delayed, to those in traditional practice.
Consider too that the most distressed FFS practices cited in the Vox piece are small, independent practices – the smallest of which are probably close to the average size of a typical DOC clinic.
Moreover, a great many DPC patients receive their care through employer-clinic contracts. The DPC practices holding these contracts are likely to receive an immediate revenue hit as employees are laid off. See, e.g., this contract between Paladina, one of the largest DPC providers and Union County, NC, a county dependent on a % sales tax.
Similarly, DPC practices generally decline accept Medicaid. But it is estimated that between one-third and one-half of all who lose employer coverage will become enrolled in Medicaid. Many of those paying for DPC out of their own pocket will both lose the income they need to pay their DPC and will be able to join Medicaid plans with minimal out-of-pocket costs.
DPC Referee 