What many people don’t realize about run of the mill health insurance benefits is the regulations that doctors are put under on a day-to-day basis.
Insurance companies are putting strict policies, quotas, and regulations on our doctors, which makes it difficult for them to run their office efficiently and also it makes it hard to give their patients the level of service and care that they deserve.
In this article, we will explore these regulations and the effect that these have on the services received by patients. We will also look at how Direct Primary Care (DPC) helps doctors avoid these policies and restrictions and why that is beneficial.
Insurance Regulations That DPC Helps Doctors Avoid
Seemingly endless paperwork
Insurance claims, patient information, and reports, oh my! Doctors are forced to fill out seemingly endless piles of paperwork each day for insurance companies, which takes up a lot of their time.
A recently published report in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine found that emergency room doctors spend 43 percent of their time entering electronic records, but only 28 percent with patients.
Not only does this take away from the time that doctors should be with patients, but it also puts a burden on them as filling out paperwork is not exactly enjoyable.
How DPC relieves this: with DPC, the insurance company is cut out of the equation, which eliminates the need for the excessive paperwork. This gives doctors back the time they need to give patients more customized care, have more frequent appointments, and to create strong patient-doctor relationships.
Putting a quota on patients seen
Insurance companies put a quota on how many patients doctors should see each day, stressing the fact that these numbers must be met. To meet these almost impossible numbers, doctors offices are scheduling appointments every fifteen minutes for each doctor.
Furthermore, insurance companies have been urging doctors to spend no more with 11 minutes with each patient, which is an extremely short amount of time for doctors who are helping diagnose illnesses, getting to know patients, answering questions, or learning about pre-existing conditions and symptoms.
How DPC relieves this: as mentioned above, in the DPC model, there is no insurance middleman involved in doctor’s practices. Because of this fact, doctors do not have to meet any unreasonable quotas.
In fact, doctors at DPC practices are committed to taking on less patients so that they may dedicate more time to each of them. It is not unusual for doctors to spend up to an hour per appointment with their patients, which is a far cry from the 11 minutes of face time patients get with regular doctors.
DPC makes it easy for doctors to provide personalized care to their patients without worrying about regulations imposed on their practice via insurance companies. These restrictions and demands can be stifling, even prompting doctors to want to leave their profession. Learn more about the strong doctor-patient relationship you’ll find with DPC.