The CEO and EVP of the American Academy of Family Physicians Sees Some of the Benefits of Direct Primary Care
The tweets above came from Shawn Martin, who is CEO and EVP of the AAFP. These tweets are not exactly aligned. First, he wants insurers to eliminate the administrative drag that has destroyed our jobs. Great. But why does he want insurance companies involved at all? Why coddle the middlemen?
The next tweet brags about Direct Primary Care. Finally!! Or does it? Yes, DPC docs know that insurance companies should not be in the primary care business. And our care is better than doctors in the system because we spend more time with our patients and we know them. Everybody wins in DPC, as Vance Lassey, MD often says.
Here are my questions for you:
- Does Shawn Martin endorse DPC or just want insurance companies to remove these administrative burdens?
- Am I being too hard on him because the AAFP works with the DPC Alliance to produce and run the DPC Summit?
- Do you think the AAFP will ever use any of its budget to promote and teach about DPC in residencies or other conferences?
- Do we even want the AAFP involved in DPC? They are the ones who agreed to everything that Shawn Martin is now complaining about.
I am open to your thoughts. Please leave it in the comments here or on Facebook.
Lori Lightfoot got voted out of the Chicago Mayor’s office. Sometimes people do learn. It took years of crime, murder, basically the people of Chicago got belted over the head with a 2×4 on a daily basis for the last four years, but they did eventually get a clue.
Along those lines, I hold out hope that the AAFP may also get a clue someday.
Almost all of those changes and things that have been pushed through particularly all these departments about patient safety and utilization review – pieces of paper that ask me if I know that the patient is on a PPI for the last two years and how long do I wanna keep them on their anti-depressant, these are offshoots of the Obama 70% rule where they had to spend more money on direct patient benefits – however, it does not benefit patients at all and it’s just yet another burden on providers. They need to start paying Appropriately, which in my opinion is a whole lot less for hospitals and a whole lot more for primary care. DPC is difficult because it is in effect a very narrow network (just you) health insurance. Insurance companies have thousands of regulations I’d like to not be beholden to.
Eliminate all utilization management, prior auth, quality and performance programs?
But those administrative burdens are exactly what the AAFP has been pushing so hard for the last quarter century.
Color me confused.