Using a direct primary care membership changes how you utilize healthcare. It can help you manager your health better and it can reduce your overall healthcare costs while also making healthcare more convenient.
Today’s guest is Dr Bradley Shumway. He is my DPC practice physician. You can find his practice at Shumway Family Medicine. He is a DO family physician in the Phoenix area and has found a lot more joy in his work as a doctor with the DPC model.
Be sure to check out my podcast episode on healthshares to learn more about how use our family’s healthcare dollar.
Big thanks to our sponsor Family Routines — routines are just your seatbelt in the wild right of parenthood. If you’re looking to make all those regular hurdles you pass during your day a bit easier, check it out!
Using a Direct Primary Care Doctor
In this episode
We’re talking about what a DPC is (vs a consierge doctor) and how it differs from using a doctor that you’re paying your insurance copay for.
How the doctor is saving money by providing you more personalized care.
Why you might want to choose to use a DPC even if you do have insurance.
How using a DPC increases convenience by allowing phone/telemedicine consults with your provider.
How having a DPC can be helpful with adult children
How to find a DPC — DPC Frontier
I use Zion Healthshare (and I’d love it if you told them you found them through me).
A couple of fixes from this episode:
- Dr Shumway actually went to Midwestern University Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine
- He will likely need to send you to have a bone set unless it’s very minor.
Other things that might interest you
Why we chose to use a healthshare (and how to find one that accepts your faith)
Zion Healthshare review (that’s the one we currently use)
Producer: Drew Erickson
Check out my other parenting podcasts:
Transcript
[00:00:00.175] – Hilary Erickson
Hey, guys, welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast! Today on Episode 86, we’re talking about how rich and famous I am, I have my very own doctor. Let’s untangle it.
[00:00:19.385] – Hilary Erickson
Welcome to the Pulling Curls Podcast, I’m Hilary, your curly headed host on the podcast, where we untangle everything from pregnancy, parenting and home routines. I want you to know that there are no right answers for every family. And I find that simplifying my priorities is almost always the answer. It’s tangled, just like my hair.
[00:00:44.225] – Hilary Erickson
OK, guys, before we jump in, could you leave a review? Reviews are the best. They’re literally like the best. I get so happy when I see them. Just leave a review. Thanks, OK. Today’s guest is my very own personal physician. That’s right. If you guys haven’t heard my podcast on health shares, go ahead and listen to that one. Because we don’t use traditional health insurance, which is crazy because I’m a nurse.
[00:01:07.895] – Hilary Erickson
We use a health share just because it became insane to have our own insurance as a self-employed people. Yeah, we were going to be paying probably fourteen hundred dollars a month for our insurance. Plus our deductible was around fifteen thousand dollars, so that just became cost prohibitive. So we switched to a Health Share. But the problem with that is it’s expensive to see a provider and you never know how much the bill is going to be like if you try and call somebody in advance to find out how much a bill will be to see like an ingrown toenail.
[00:01:38.135] – Hilary Erickson
A lot of times you just can’t find out because we’re like, well, it really depends on once we get in there and yada, yada. But anyway, so I had heard about this model of care. A few friends of mine had used it. And I was jealous just because it seemed like so great to have a doctor kind of on call for you whenever you want. You know, he doesn’t call me back like within two minutes of calling.
[00:01:55.595] – Hilary Erickson
But when my son has emailed him, you know, within a couple of hours he has an appointment set up or they email back and forth and have gotten something set up. So that’s really great. So today’s guest, he went to ASU, which is the college in our local town, and then he got his degree at the U of A, Osteopathic Medicine, which is just south of us. And he actually was a resident when I worked in labor and delivery.
[00:02:17.585] – Hilary Erickson
We saw the family practice residence every once in a while. And so we saw him there. And one of my favorite things about him is that he’s just interested in lots of different things and I think a lot of family practice doctors go into family practice because they are interested in a lot of different things. And family practice historically has seen lots of different things. And so that’s exciting for them. But I want to introduce my doctor, Brad Shumway.
[00:02:43.295] – Hilary Erickson
Are you overwhelmed by all there is to do around your house as a new mom? I felt overwhelmed at every turn. Fortunately, I turned to systems to make a change, whether it’s morning’s dinnertime or even just to climb out of a pile of kids clothes, my course, family routines can save you. I hold your hand as we smooth out these rough patches making every day easier so we can more easily handle when your preschooler tells you they can use their urine like a light saber, parenting is always going to be a wild ride.
[00:03:08.585] – Hilary Erickson
Routines are just your seatbelt and they can support you. Use coupon code UNTANGLED to save 15 percent at checkout, link in the show notes. Hey, Dr. Shumway, welcome to the podcast.
[00:03:23.785] – Brad Shumway
Hi, it’s good to be on.
[00:03:25.435] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah. So I don’t call people Dr. Shumway, but I wanted to introduce you that way. So this is Brad Shumway. He’s my doctor, like we said in the intro. And I just I’m excited to have him on because I think this is an area of medicine.
[00:03:37.825] – Hilary Erickson
People don’t really understand that. They think it’s for the ultra rich, which I would not be a part of. Yeah.
[00:03:43.195] – Brad Shumway
Yeah.
[00:03:43.675] – Hilary Erickson
So do you think that this this mode of care is just for rich people? Do you think that’s how people view it?
[00:03:49.525] – Brad Shumway
I think some people see that as see it that way for sure. There are different types of direct primary care. There is sometimes what people call concierge medical care that often is kind of for the rich and famous, so to speak, as the executives. It’s people paying thousands and thousands of dollars a year for their personal physician. But usually direct primary care refers to more of a clinic for the masses, so to speak, for the normal person.
[00:04:16.805] – Hilary Erickson
OK, yeah. So that’s interesting. I didn’t really know that there was something different. I figured you were my concierge doctor.
[00:04:25.045] – Hilary Erickson
OK, so let’s talk about it. So what is a DPC, what does it stand for? Yeah, good, good question. So DPC stands for direct primary care and there there can be a lot of variety, like I mentioned, in all the specific characteristics of different primary care clinics. But fundamentally, the characteristic is that the patient and the primary care doctor deal directly with each other financially rather than through a health insurance company, which we often refer to as a third party payer.
[00:04:56.275] – Brad Shumway
And this ultimately came about as a response to the challenges that come with traditional fee for service or third payer party systems, because these current systems result in clinics that they need a lot of staff to handle all the administrative burdens and going back and forth with the insurance companies, a lot of paperwork, which ultimately means that doctors have to pack in more and more patients every day to pay for all the high overhead. And ultimately, that leads to bad outcomes.
[00:05:27.115] – Brad Shumway
It’s poor quality of care because the doctor’s in and out of the room in five minutes, patients are unhappy, doctors are unhappy, and as a result, we’re seeing major shortages in primary care physicians due to high burnout rates and frustrations. And so, DPC practices have developed. They have been around for quite a while, but over the past probably 10 to 20 years really started taking off because so many doctors are saying this is such a better model, not just for patients, but for their own health and well-being as well.
[00:05:58.355] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah, and I see that one hundred percent when we have a visit, it’s not the same as it is when you go to your basic provider.
[00:06:06.625] – Brad Shumway
Yeah, I’ve worked in both situations. So after my residency training I did a couple of years in a big network, so to speak, practice. And very quickly I was realizing I am not going to last in this career. I was forced to pack in more and more patients every day, so I’m in and out of the room quickly and having to force patients to say, all right, let’s just stick with one issue today and then you have to follow up for another issue, silly things like that that don’t make any sense.
[00:06:36.085] – Brad Shumway
And yeah, just I was already looking for my escape from medicine, which is not healthy. When you think about the long pipeline it takes to… To become a doctor.
[00:06:45.625] – Hilary Erickson
Right. Well, as a patient, I don’t want a doctor who wants to get out of medicine.
[00:06:52.615] – Hilary Erickson
I want one that’s enjoying it and thriving. And I think so many, especially people that go into family practice, are really looking for that, helping families and that type of thing, rather than I don’t think you go into family practice to get cardiac surgeon rich.
[00:07:06.535] – Brad Shumway
I think that is a misconception that for the most part, doctors really do want to become doctors, especially those who go into primary care, really want to be doctors to help people and help overcome their challenges and everything. And so long gone are the days that people are becoming family doctors to get filthy rich, who, for one thing, medical school debt is so high these days. I just recently I’ve worked with a couple of medical students who have over one head over six hundred thousand in debt, the other over seven hundred thousand.
[00:07:36.805] – Brad Shumway
And so they’re so far in the hole that becoming super wealthy is never going to be in their in their future.
[00:07:44.905] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah. When we’ve had honest talks, especially when I worked in the Bay Area, because those nurses make so much money, when we had honest talks with the physicians, there were points that we were making more than them. Well, because if we pick up overtime, we get overtime, whereas if you pick up over time, you get nothing.
[00:08:02.545] – Brad Shumway
And so you’re exactly right. I mean, the this type of practice, one of the goals is a happy doctor, which you mentioned you as a patient, any of us as patients. Ultimately, we want doctors who are happy. If you have a doctor who’s grumpy and upset, they’re not going to be able to provide you with good care because they’re not even in a good, healthy situation themselves, and so doctors, in fact, there’s plenty of evidence of high burnout rates.
[00:08:29.665] – Brad Shumway
Unfortunately, doctors have one of the highest suicide rates of various professions out there. And so this has been a big response for that. But I think even more important is the health and well-being of patients. So when a doctor can spend more time with their patients, it overcomes so many challenges. I mean, doctors aren’t… In general, we’re probably intelligent people, but we’re not just automatic machine geniuses that can come up with solutions in one second. So having time to think and discuss with patients is huge.
[00:09:03.415] – Brad Shumway
It can help figure out the concerns so much better than in a seven minute visit. So ultimately, doctors who practice in these styles are able to help patients overcome challenges better, they refer a lot less to specialists. They do a lot less unnecessary testing because ultimately, if you’re spending more time with people, you get to the bottom of the issues. You know, the current traditional primary care doctor has almost become sort of a referral machine. If you cough, I’m sending you to pulmonologists, if you sneeze, sending you to an allergist, if you have abdominal pain, I’m sending you to gastroenterologist instead of actually doing things and figuring things out.
[00:09:42.805] – Brad Shumway
So that’s that’s one of the biggest benefits of a direct primary care practice, is it allows doctors to spend more time with their patients.
[00:09:51.185] – Hilary Erickson
OK, so I love how you pointed out. I was just thinking that a lot of health care issues are long term problems. And so we’re not we’re not forced to have this one time visit where you just put a Band-Aid over it and we can fix that solution over time. So I really like that part of the DPC. So do you have people that you like, meet or whatever and are like, oh, I’d love to come see you?
[00:10:11.065] – Hilary Erickson
And then they have traditional health insurance and that’s how they want to deal with it and they’re not interested. Do you get that a lot?
[00:10:17.125] – Brad Shumway
Sometimes. I mean, I make it pretty clear on my website and everything. So it kind of filters that out to some extent. But what I tell people a lot is. So let me back up a little bit right now. About half of my patients have insurance, traditional insurance, and about half don’t have insurance or they have other options like health shares or other kind of short term plans, different things like that. And so having health insurance doesn’t make this a bad option.
[00:10:44.305] – Brad Shumway
So maybe let me back up a little bit and explain a little more about DPC practices so they all vary a lot. Like I mentioned, there can be so called concierge practices that a patients pay huge amounts of money like three thousand a year or more. And sometimes those practices will still even bill regular insurance as well, so that that yearly cost is just sort of a retainer. But most who call themselves direct primary care clinics, basically how it works is they pay a low, flat monthly rate, usually somewhere in the range of 50 to one hundred dollars per month.
[00:11:20.275] – Brad Shumway
It depends on the type of clinic. And what that provides them is basically all of their office visits. So they get a yearly wellness visit, usually covers all their problem visits, so often as many visits as they need, depending on the clinic office visits can be a lot longer, can be an hour, sometimes hour and a half as long as it takes to get through the issues. It also opens up the door for a lot to be more conveniently done over the phone or by e-mail, that sort of thing, because in the traditional world, a doctor can’t get stuck just on the phone talking forever with people or they’re ultimately not getting paid for that that time.
[00:11:55.885] – Brad Shumway
But if someone’s paying a flat monthly rate that covers that, it usually covers in office procedures, some office testing. So really cool model because the patient is just paying for their primary care services with a flat monthly rate. And so some things that that helps out with is a flat monthly… Flat monthly rate creates convenience so someone doesn’t have to get rid of all of a sudden they’ve got all these medical problems. So I’ve got all these doctor visits to pay for the stress of that.
[00:12:24.865] – Brad Shumway
It’s just spread out a flat monthly rate, which is convenient. Also being able to do more things over the phone or by email, not having to sort of build up a bunch of problems before they decide, OK, I better go see the doctor now that I can actually get them addressed. And so a lot of peace of mind there, even though we don’t work through health insurance companies, surprisingly, direct primary care clinics have been shown to decrease health care costs.
[00:12:48.955] – Brad Shumway
And I think part of that is what I already mentioned, that we end up doing a lot less unnecessary testing or referrals to specialists because we can actually address the problems with knowing patients better and spending more time with them. Also, like you mentioned, if if someone’s already doing a membership, they’re more likely to be proactive with their health, not just waiting, like you mentioned, to have their long term problems go on and on and just put bandaids on them.
[00:13:14.335] – Brad Shumway
They’re already paying for a service. And so I might as well go use it and do a wellness visit instead of just putting it off.
[00:13:21.825] – Hilary Erickson
Right.
[00:13:22.215] – Brad Shumway
And direct primary care clinics, because they’re lower overhead and don’t have as many staff, they’re able to have basically less patients in their panel. So to give people an idea, the average primary care doctor often has two to three thousand patients in their panel, which when they do the math, it just doesn’t make sense.
[00:13:41.565] – Brad Shumway
They’re not going to be able to take good care of all those people, which is why urgent cares are all over the place right now, whereas a direct primary care doctor usually has anywhere from three to six hundred patients in their panel. And so they know their patients way better. They spend more time with them that they’re not packing in as many per day. They can get their patients in quicker, usually same day or next day, which is fantastic.
[00:14:03.705] – Brad Shumway
So it reduces a lot of the need for urgent cares and E.R. visits, too. So a lot of those things ultimately decrease health care costs. And so if people do have health insurance, a lot of times I’ve seen significant number of my patients have very high deductible plans. And so they kind of have the feeling that, you know, I’m not going to hit my deductible unless something huge happens. I need a surgery or something like that.
[00:14:26.145] – Brad Shumway
And so I’m basically going to be paying out of pocket anyway. Might as well see whoever I want to and actually get good care. And then even a lot of Medicare, patients with Medicare, choose these systems, because even though they they pay out of pocket and get those office fees reimbursed, they can still do their prescriptions and testing and all those other things through Medicare. But they have a doctor who’s actually going to spend more time with them, especially in a time of their life when they have a lot more medical problems usually.
[00:14:53.505] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah, I could see my parents loving this. But why when they have me that they can call?
[00:15:02.685] – Brad Shumway
That’s awesome.
[00:15:03.975] – Hilary Erickson
One of the things I think that’s so important, you mentioned before that they they’re just kind of like referral machines is to find a DPC who really likes to do lots of different things because I see these family practice residents coming in. And part of the reason they pick family practice is they love all the different areas, which I totally get because you want to see lots of different things. You know?
[00:15:24.105] – Brad Shumway
Jack of all trades of medicine.
[00:15:26.105] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah, but a lot of them end up just being like, oh, well, it could be an ear infection. Let’s send you to an ENT. You want to look for a doctor who is willing to do lots of different things and kind of excited about that part of family practice. And when I looked at your website when we were initially looking, that was one of the things I was like, well, that’s cool, because I definitely just don’t want to get referred out for everything if I have a DPC.
[00:15:46.385] – Brad Shumway
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that’s something. And I think a lot of family doctors, like you said, they want to be Jack… Jack of all trades type of doctor. And yeah, when you have more time as well, it allows us as doctors to look things up and figure things out. I think a lot of doctors, they become referral machines because they just don’t even have time to think about it or research or look up the best evidence or current things.
[00:16:10.335] – Brad Shumway
And they just say, you know what, I am better off, or the system is forcing me to do this. I’m just going to refer them so I can move on to the next patient. And that’s a terrible way to go.
[00:16:20.235] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah, I will say when I started being a nurse in the hospital, I was shocked by how much Googling doctors do. But it makes sense. You can’t know about everything all the time. Like you can’t.
[00:16:31.405] – Brad Shumway
Yeah, well, fortunately, there’s better options than Google.
[00:16:34.365] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah, they do other things, but to me it looks like they’re just looking at Google.
[00:16:38.175] – Brad Shumway
Oh yeah. No, we have excellent resources that I think if a doctor honestly is not looking things up a lot, then it should be concerning to a patient. I’m totally open with my patients. Hey, you know what? Let me get back to you on that. I’m going to research what’s the best current evidence. And because ultimately, being a doctor or any health care professional, it’s a lifelong learning process. If you’re never if you ever stop learning, then that’s a bad thing, because they always taught us in medical school variations on this quote.
[00:17:08.205] – Brad Shumway
But a third of what we teach you in medical school is wrong. The problem is we don’t know which third it is. And basically the idea is we always have to keep learning because the evidence always changes and we get more and more science and data.
[00:17:21.885] – Hilary Erickson
So, yeah, I think that shouldn’t be… It was surprising to young Hillary, but also nurses Google a lot, too. So there’s that. Yeah. So just so you guys can do the math in your head, so I’m on a health share. I have a… One or two podcasts about us being on a health share. I will link those in the show notes. So our health share is like it was like six hundred-ish a month and if we use a DPC it decreased it by two hundred dollars a month and we pay Dr Shumway just under two hundred dollars a month.
[00:17:49.455] – Hilary Erickson
So it’s pretty much just staying the same, the price. But we have this doctor that we could call whenever, whereas previous to this, we had our fifteen thousand dollar health insurance deductible and like my family was not allowed to go to the doctor. Like we went to the mini clinic a couple of times. I was just like, we are fixing whatever we can at home. Because it was a lot of money to go to a doctor. And then you never knew how much money was going to be to see the doctor, because I would call places and they’re like, well, it just really varies on what you have or whatever.
[00:18:18.045] – Hilary Erickson
And then I was also, like and we are only talking about allergies while we are here today, don’t tell them your finger hurts.
[00:18:24.565] – Brad Shumway
Yeah, you bring up a good point. Let me share something there. I think one thing that direct primary care doctors really do well also is because they usually have a larger percent of uninsured or people on different options like this. Health shares, they’re much more familiar with that. And they think a lot more about what something is going to cost someone.
[00:18:45.775] – Brad Shumway
And I think that is huge. There are so many doctors, either because they don’t have time or just because patients have insurance or the doctors don’t even know what things cost. They just write a prescription or do a test without any knowledge of how much it’s going to actually cost the patient. And then the poor patient goes to the pharmacy and, oh, this this medication is going to cost you three hundred dollars. And the patient just thinks, well, that’s what the doctor wrote for me.
[00:19:11.305] – Brad Shumway
So I guess I have to do that without thinking, oh, maybe the doctor has a different option that’s cheaper. And so that’s something that DPC doctors are usually very good at, is knowing how to figure out what is going to be a more affordable option while not decreasing the quality and being more judicious with what tests do we really need here to help this person get better and working with the health shares, knowing kind of how they tend to function.
[00:19:38.435] – Brad Shumway
So that’s a really huge benefit. There’s a lot of other things that and it varies on different direct primary care doctors, but we often have agreements with various lab companies to help get people very, very affordable rates on lab testing. So I use a company that, for instance, if you’re familiar with different blood tests, that a CBC costs about 10 bucks, a CMP about 10 bucks. Most of these routine tests are well under 10 or 15 dollars, which is pretty cool.
[00:20:08.785] – Brad Shumway
And then some direct primary care clinics. And I’m just starting to do this as well. We’ll even dispense some medications and office and so we can purchase them for very low prices and turn around and get them to patients for even less than GoodRx prices. So that’s a pretty cool thing as well.
[00:20:25.765] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah, definitely. I definitely see that you guys are more cost sensitive. As a nurse who used to work for a pediatrician, you as a patient, you don’t know this, but sometimes they have a drug rep that’s outside the door that just talked to them about some fantastic antifungal, which, again, they prescribe because they’re like, well, this drug’s amazing. And then I get a call from the pharmacy saying this drug is six thousand dollars. And the pediatrician just prescribed it because they thought it was great.
[00:20:50.855] – Hilary Erickson
But again, he doesn’t really care how much it costs and he just got free lunch. I’m not saying that all pediatricians are like that, but these are the things behind the scenes. And I was going to say when you mentioned it, when I worked for a pediatrician, there was about, I would say, twice as many admin and billing staff than there were any health care providers in that office between like nurses and doctors and all that. We had way more billing.
[00:21:13.945] – Brad Shumway
That’s why I don’t meet with drug reps. That’s my policy. Any drug reps out there? Sorry, not trying to be rude or anything.
[00:21:24.295] – Brad Shumway
But that’s that’s just kind of my policy because there’s plenty of evidence out there that it’s causes worse care for patients, less less quality, higher expense to patients. When we have…
[00:21:37.195] – Hilary Erickson
I think drug reps have gotten significantly less.
[00:21:39.985] – Hilary Erickson
I mean, I was working for a pediatrician in 1997, so it was kind of a while ago, a bit of a dinosaur. So but that’s something that’s just like an idea of kind of what goes on behind the scenes. The doctor just hears of this amazing new treatment and really doesn’t know how much it costs, although I think all doctors are starting to get better at that.
[00:21:55.655] – Brad Shumway
Yeah, yeah. They kind of have to. Yeah.
[00:21:58.255] – Hilary Erickson
Because so many people have these freakishly high deductibles that they’re going to have to pay everything out of pocket. So I will say the one thing that I’ve been surprised about what we love most about this is that we have an older kid who I thought was never going to use that. He’s going to be twenty one the summer and he… Dr Shumway can’t confirm or deny this, obviously. But I can tell you that he’s seen him like a couple of times when he just kept calling me and I was like, I don’t know! I pay this doctor, go see him.
[00:22:28.315] – Hilary Erickson
And it has been so nice to have somebody you can just call and make an appointment with, like a normal human. And I don’t have to like I’m not like and then I’ll reimburse your copay or whatever. We just pay it every month. And it’s been so helpful. Plus, I know that if he ever had, like, a medical concern that he was like, I don’t know, doing drugs or had an STD, he could talk to you about that.
[00:22:47.905] – Hilary Erickson
And I wouldn’t have it would just be a free range conversation between you two. He wouldn’t have to be like, hey, mom, I was thinking about going to the doctor or whatever like that. So I think that’s something to think about with older kids. They have more access to health care instead of just ignoring it, like probably most college kids do.
[00:23:03.865] – Brad Shumway
Yeah, and most clinics will offer discounted rates to younger kids. And so, for instance, just to share my my clinic prices up to age twenty is fifteen dollars a month. If a parent is enrolled and then adults age twenty to forty nine is fifty five dollars a month and fifty five and older, sorry, age 50 and older is seventy five dollars a month. And so that’s that’s the cost. So it really, when it works out, is very reasonable cost and each DPC practice can vary in their costs.
[00:23:35.455] – Brad Shumway
So you can always shop around. Maybe I could give a tip on if people want to find a direct primary care.
[00:23:41.245] – Hilary Erickson
Yes, for sure.
[00:23:43.135] – Brad Shumway
There’s some different websites, but one that has a big map across the US and everything is called DPC Frontier. So they have kind of a map. And I think most direct primary care clinics have put their information on that website. And so that’s how quite a few people have found me. And then some of the health shares, like I think the one you’re on, I think links to that site or something to help people find DPC clinics.
[00:24:11.725] – Brad Shumway
So a couple of the health shares, like the one you’re on, offer discounted rates to people who are enrolled in a plan. And why? Because these health shares are figured it out, have figured out that if patients are in these types of practices, they ultimately have lower health care costs. Otherwise they wouldn’t be offering discounted rates to people. So it.
[00:24:30.445] – Hilary Erickson
Right.
[00:24:30.895] – Brad Shumway
Since these companies are figuring it out.
[00:24:32.785] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah. And I’m on like I’m on Zion’s marketing list, so I’m on Zion HealthShare. And they always are like encouraging people to talk more about DPC’s, because I don’t think the general population really understands how they work and how they can save that money ultimately. And so, yeah, they really like a I will say so we used to have Kaiser when we were in California and Kaiser has a very similar kind of model, like they were doing phone and email visits long before any of this, just because they realized that if they did a phone visit, they could save the doctor time.
[00:25:06.295] – Hilary Erickson
I mean, everything Kaiser does is explicitly about saving money, obviously, but they had a much more DPC model of care because they understood that in the long term it would save them money and it would save time for the doctor if they would just do these things. And so that’s kind of exciting and obviously shows that it will decrease the health care dollar throughout the system. Yeah, yeah. OK, so Dr. Shumway is in Mesa, Arizona.
[00:25:31.505] – Hilary Erickson
If you guys are looking for a DPC, are you accepting new patients?
[00:25:34.525] – Brad Shumway
Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure.
[00:25:35.935] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah. And we really liked him. I actually knew him as a resident. Like, we vaguely knew each other.
[00:25:40.025] – Brad Shumway
Crossed paths in the labor and delivery over there.
[00:25:44.395] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah. Scared. Could you deliver babies now?
[00:25:48.925] – Brad Shumway
I don’t.
[00:25:49.405] – Brad Shumway
I do miss it though. Yeah. That’s a that’s a hard thing with family medicine. We get all this training and deliveries and most family doctors don’t end up doing it. The challenges… Don’t get me started on malpractise insurance, but it would bump your malpractise insurance costs up so much that you would have to deliver quite a number of babies just to even pay for the malpractise insurance. And then at some point it’s like, well, do I really want to be doing that many deliveries?
[00:26:19.765]
I’m not an OB, right? So it’s it’s too bad because I really did enjoy that part. A lot of family doctors become hospitals and other areas. It’s a cool specialty because there’s a lot of things you can do.
[00:26:33.655]
Yeah, no, I agree. I think and I love family practice doctors in general. You’re the easiest to get along with. Yeah.
[00:26:40.225]
And you quickly learn in medical school when you’re doing rotations and different specialties.
[00:26:45.355]
That’s traditionally the family doctors and the pediatricians are the the nice ones, the kind ones that’s obviously totally over generalizing but all over a generalized with you, although I’ve worked with some loser pediatricians too, so I’ll go both ways anyway.
[00:27:03.835]
So guys, it’s worth checking out. I’m so grateful that you came on the podcast today because I just I think it’s something people don’t understand. I think it’s for the ultra rich when it can really just save you time and energy.
[00:27:14.725]
So thanks for coming on. Yeah. Thank you so much. I’m really honored. OK, I hope this episode was helpful. A lot of what I do on this podcast and on my website is just kind of demystify health care. And I think this is a really attractive option for families, the ability to just text him to see if something’s a problem. We had pretty severe allergies earlier this spring and I was just like, do you have any thoughts on how to know if it is covered?
[00:27:38.575]
And covid testing was like a big fat mess. And so it was just so nice to be able to email him. I didn’t need to see him, but he just gave me some articles to look at and some things to think about. This type of care is just handy for busy moms. I have to say. We don’t have to be seen for everything. You can be seen. I just love it, guys. And as I mentioned in the episode, it actually ends up being even Steven for us in our crazy HealthShare.
[00:28:00.055]
And so I would just encourage you to think about how you can conserve on your health care dollar. You know, if you’re spending more than two hundred dollars a month on a lot of office visits for your family say you get a lot of earaches. Oh, my gosh. We could have saved a lot of money for Eric’s back in the day. He can see you and see if he thinks the bones broken. He can get an x ray.
[00:28:17.605]
He could either set it or he could. Send you to a doctor, if he really felt like he needed you needed something more, but at least then you have an opinion on it versus just like a lot of doctors will just look at the X-ray and just send you away. So it’s an option, guys, and it’s not a crazy expensive option. As I said, it’s about two hundred dollars a month. But if you have a super high deductible, if you’ve made the decision that you’re going to save on health insurance by having this high deductible, you know, maybe you put some of that savings towards a dpk to some to think about.
[00:28:43.955]
Thanks so much for joining us today. I hope we help smooth out a few of the snarls in your life. We drop an episode every Monday and we always appreciate it when you guys share and review until next time. We hope you have a tangle free day.
Leave a Reply