Law would protect pay-as-you-go care
By the end of her first seven years as a physician in Lakeland, Tami Singh was responsible for more than 4,000 patients.
While the hospital system she worked for kept pushing her to see more and more patients, those patients found it harder and harder to see her, she said.
“The patients started complaining. They couldn’t talk to me or anyone on my staff. They were told they couldn’t get an appointment for two to three weeks,” she said. “Then [the hospital system] started double- and triple-booking my appointment slots.”
That pressure, along with the administrative work required for insurance reimbursement, was robbing Singh of the ability to feel good about helping people — which, after all, was the reason she became a doctor, she said.
So she decided to leave the large corporate practice, return to South Florida where she grew up, and start from scratch with a small practice based on an alternative business structure called Direct Primary Care.
The Florida Legislature this spring passed a bill that proponents say should help attract both physicians and consumers to adopt the concept, as fee-for-service practices take on more patients and costs for traditional health insurance continue to rise. The bill would require providers to inform members in writing that a Direct Primary Care membership is not a health insurance plan, while preventing providers who adopt the model from being regulated as health insurance. Asked whether Gov. Rick Scott plans to sign the bill, a spokeswoman said he has not yet received it.
Modeled after a product known as concierge medicine that’s marketed mainly to wealthy people, Direct Primary Care is a membership-based provider model that strips the health insurance layer — and its exorbitant costs — from the provider-patient relationship and makes concierge-level access available for $100 or less a month, depending on a member’s age.
Members can make same-day appointments and get unlimited visits with their health-care pro-