On May 13th, the Direct Primary Alliance published a manifesto: Building the Path to Direct Primary Care. It was signed by every officer and board member of the largest membership organization of direct primary care physicians.
In so many words, it said:
- FFS primary care practice is being destroyed, financially, by the Covid-19 pandemic.
- DPC is thriving, financially.
- DPC has always been great, and has always been superior to FFS.
- Because of the pandemic, DPC is now even greater and even more superior to FFS.
- DPC will be even greater than it is now and even more superior to FFS than it is now, if we get help from government, insurers, employers, patients and everyone else.
- DPC achieves lower overall healthcare spending.
- DPC Alliance will help FFS practicitioners transfer to DPC.
In a recent post, I addressed the DPC-PATH’s claims regarding how well, relative to FFS practices, DPC practices were weathering covid-induced financial stress.
Here I turn to DPC-PATH as representing DPC Aliance’s clearest statement yet of the perennial claim by DPC advocates that “Direct pay primary care models provide health care purchasers with a means to achieve lower overall healthcare spending.5 6“.
Ah, yes, the footnotes.
Here’s Footnote 5:
Basu, Sanjay, et al. “Utilization and Cost of an Employer-Sponsored Comprehensive Primary Care Delivery Model.” JAMA Network Open, vol. 3, no. 4, 2020, doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.3803.
This was a lengthy, exhaustive study of a large number of employees of a single employer, and it featured serious efforts at adjusting for demographic factors. The employees were offered the option of receiving primary care through traditional community PCPs or through either one on-site or fifteen near-site employer-sponsored clinics. It may well be the soundest study ever to show success in a primary care cost savings initiative. The study found savings of $167 PMPM, 45%, for those using primarily the on-site, near-site clinics delivery model.
But that delivery model was absolutely not direct primary care. Every employee visit in both the “treatment” group and the “control” group was reimbursed to the providers on a fee for service basis by the employer and/or employee cost sharing (a mix of deductibles, co-pays, and coinsurance).
In other words, what DPC Alliance’s manifesto presented as its first piece of evidence that direct primary care can save money was an article that seemingly demonstrated that certain FFS-based primary care delivery clinics saved money.
Interestingly, the Basu article on FFS on-site, near-site clinics in DPC-PATH’s footnote 5 more or less steps on the second bit of evidence purported, by DPC Alliance in Footnote 6, to show that DPCs reduce cost. That footnote links to the claimed savings of 28% for a DPC option in the employee health plan of Union County, NC.
Surprise! DPC is offered in Union County through a proudly touted near-site clinic. So, the article presented by DPC-PATH Footnote 5 suggests that the results shown in the article presented by DPC-PATH Footnote 6 can be explained by the location of the Union County clinic rather than the payment model under which the Union County clinic operates.
More importantly, however, the Union County DPC plan is the best studied plan in the entire direct primary care universe. DPC advocates have bragged about it again and again (1k hits for “Union County” and “direct primary care”).
It is also the only DPC plan to date (May 2020) that has received extended, comprehensive, risk-adjusted analysis from an independent team of actuaries. They found that:
… [T]he introduction of a DPC option increased total nonadministrative plan costs for the employer by 1.3% after consideration of the DPC membership fee and other plan design changes for members enrolled in the DPC option.
Pleaase click here for further detail..
Apparently, not even using a near-site clinic could make DPC a money saving proposition for Union County. In fact, I show in a separate post that the DPC option likely increased Union County’s costs for covered employees, not by a mere 1.3%, but by nearly 8%.
DPC Referee 