How Employers Can Make a Direct Primary Care Agreement Work for Employees

Direct Primary Care (DPC) is capturing the attention of employers who want to offer better health care coverage to their employees. With DPC, a patient can form a one-on-one relationship with their doctor and have 24/7 access to medical care. DPC has been shown to help provide superior healthcare for individuals, lowering their overall healthcare costs and improving outcomes.

The challenge for employers who want to offer DPC – how to ensure employees are covered for both primary care health services and care the DPC doctor can’t provide.

First, a little about DPC. There is no insurance involvement. It's a contract between a doctor and the patient to provide all their primary care medical services a patient and their family needs. Office visits, routine checkups, stitches and simple fractures are all services that can be handled in the DPC office. The scope of services varies by physician practice but often includes access to inexpensive drugs and x-rays.

How it works.
An employer or employee who is in a DPC arrangement makes a fixed monthly payment to a doctor’s office in order to have access to primary care health services. There is usually no extra copay or deductible for patients to meet.

For comprehensive major medical protection that covers unpredictable major medical events, like surgeries or cancer, insurance is still necessary.

Employers now can pair a DPC membership with a major medical plan. For instance, Allied National offers comprehensive major medical benefit plans to coordinate with a DPC plan. Insurance benefits that are already handled by the DPC are removed to eliminate the overlap in benefits and help reduce costs.

For parents, one of the biggest benefits of a DPC is that they can make unlimited visits to a physician and the appointment can last as long as necessary. This allows physicians to get to know their patients better and work on a plan to improve the patient’s health. And with an insurance plan that also addresses emergencies, families have the peace of mind that they will be covered regardless the severity of the illness.

A DPC arrangement can be a cost-effective strategy for individuals or for employers looking to provide health benefits. Overall costs can be lowered, and better health outcomes can be achieved.
For more info on DPC, the DPC Frontier website provides good resources for both individuals and providers.

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Allied National

Founded in 1970, Allied is one of the nation's oldest and most experienced third-party administrators. As the small group benefit experts, Allied works with small business employers to provide unique and affordable group health benefits.