Dr. Kiran Grewal outlines the health and cost benefits Direct Primary Care creates.

There is a growing counter-trend in healthcare opposing every federally-regulated, employer-sponsored, insurance carrier-operated model. Curiously, this model is creating healthier people, more affordable health services, and doctors with higher professional satisfaction.

Direct Primary Care is not a new idea. It’s how family doctors traditionally practiced. But to many Americans who have grown up with a healthcare system dominated by government regulation and insurance corporations, it sounds a little strange.

Instead of employers and individuals paying into an insurance plan that then sets the parameters for how and when benefits can be extracted, people and families find a direct primary care physician, pay a low monthly membership fee and gain direct access to their doctor and a host of low-cost complementary services.

That was the model outlined by Dr. Kiran Grewal, a board-certified family medicine physician and a Functional Medicine Institution candidate, in her presentation at the Libertarian Party of Wake County’s ongoing speaker series.

While the Direct Primary Care financial transaction may, by design, feel like an insurance model, the incentives it creates could not be more different.

Doctors and patients determine what health options are best, without regard for what procedures are or are not covered by a patient’s insurance plan. Doctors are free to discuss more lifestyle-based and less invasive treatment options.

Patients are encouraged to call, text or email their physician day or night with questions or concerns. Doctors spend more time listening to their patients and helping them achieve their health goals.

Doctors and patients build a relationship of trust and care that doesn’t exist in a transactional, fee-for-service insurance model.

And the results are clear. Patients are actually healthier when they can form a relationship with their primary care physician around shared health concerns and goals. Doctors can focus on prevention and on treating the whole patient, rather than just alleviating a symptom.

And while doctors may make less money in a direct primary care model than they would in an insurance-billed fee-for-service framework, business quality and professional satisfaction more than make up the difference.

Attendees to the event listened intently and asked insightful questions. While the concept seemed so obvious, it was difficult to believe that healthcare could be so much easier and so much better.

You can find out more about WakeLP’s speaker series and upcoming topics by visiting their Facebook page at http://facebook.com/wakelp their Meetup calendar at https://www.meetup.com/Triangle-Libertarian/ or at http://www.wakelp.org