Santa Cruz Direct Primary Care

Thank you CMA, State of California and our local Santa Cruz County Medical Society for free PPE!!! Many thanks to all who coordinated and helped to keep us safe and allow us to continue with safe care for our patients!

Proud to be a part of this national organization, the DPC Alliance, and their support for physicians with the "DPC Path" and the opening of their DPC University information to all physicians. Any physician who is locally interested in discussing this model of care or considering a transition to a better way to practice medicine and achieve the quadruple aim, feel free to contact us! --Jeannine https://dpcalliance.org/dpc-path

Nice review of DPC from Medical Economics. I love the last section on Autonomy in medicine: 'As Rachel Hines, MD, MPH says, I hate that it has taken a pandemic to reveal that what our healthcare system needs is a strong, accessible, and nimble primary care baseDPC in a nutshell. '... Many independent practices are suffering in this pandemic because of the financial burden of the "fee-for-service" model. This system forces physicians into needing a "number of bodies through the door" financially instead of giving patients the appropriate time, continuity, and relationship development that is critical to good care. Many primary care physicians are the first line of defense for care in this country, have been and will be on the front lines of testing, diagnosis and treatment for this and future pandemics. Primary care should not be under a fee-for-service model, and practices small and large need to reinvest in our physician "first responders." This pandemic has shown us that it is time to build a strong primary care base that IS the center and focus of our care in this country. It needs to be an appropriate spoke and wheel model with a strong center, not a specialty care conduit that does nothing to support the training and the work and the experience that we have achieved as Family Medicine physicians. If there are any Family physicians or primary care physicians locally interested in learning about the DPC model, please feel free to contact us. We feel this model brings you back to the physician you wanted to be, the person you wrote about in your medical school application who was interested in helping people and their communities. Family Medicine Strong, DPC Strong! --Jeannine

Nice review of how policy makers are not helping promote appropriate primary care with their new metrics and pay-for-performance financial schemes. Direct Primary Care as a better model of care avoids these problems.

There is growing speculation in the DPC community that DPC is a model these three know about and may be working on something interesting....

Local article about Direct Primary Care and the excitement from the newly trained residents and medical students, which we see when they rotate with us! https://www.sfgate.com//A-new-kind-of-doctor-s-office-char

Similar to the Atul Gawande article "Overkill", this article reviews the impressive amount of financial waste and preference for unnecessary procedures in a system that does not support good primary care. I like the discussion about "do no harm" as a part of our medical ethics -- as it should include an understanding of financial harm, which is unfortunately all too common with the current medical model....

It's sad that we had to have a study to show this, since many of us know that this is the case, but nice that we some proof of how the lack of continuity of care with a hospitalist model hurts patients. --Jeannine

NPR article on a DPC practice in Eugene -- the "Slow Medicine" movement continues to gain steam!

"Call to arms" from one of the DPC leaders, Dr Erika Bliss, concerning the need for the primary care revolution in US medicine...

Opinion this weekend from a Specialist about the need for better primary care support, from NYTimes...

Continuing with the national movement! Article from the American Academy of Family Physicians!

This article is a good review on the absurdity of the coding system, especially in the hospital context, but the discussion about doing "one more thing" to upcode the visit is rampant in the outpatient setting as well. Completely avoided by our DPC model...nice review.