Firstly, the overall goal is better health and medical care. Direct primary care has been shown to reduce emergency department visits and hospitalizations while allowing more convenient treatment via phone, text and virtual visits. That better care alone saves money.
But many of us are interested in saving as much of our hard-earned cash as we can, so let’s look more. By having a limited number of patients, direct primary care helps to save more money by allowing office visits and a yearly prevention physical with no copays. In addition, outside testing for direct primary care patients is negotiated by the practice, finding remarkable rates 20% to 50% of standard charges for things like CT and MRI scans and lab tests. The DPC office can frequently find much less expensive medications for patients than they have been purchasing. The need for outside consultations and the accompanying high co-pays is reduced by extra time the doctor can spend with patients, and the availability of online specialty consultations at no charge to the patient. When needing to go to a specialist, the DPC physician can streamline that process by getting needed testing done before visits at reduced prices, and sometimes even help patients find specialists who give similar breaks to those who pay cash.
The savings in out-of-pocket expenses allows one to obtain a higher deductible policy, saving significantly on the premiums, and put that savings away just in case a catastrophe happens. From the graph, one sees that the total one pays in a catastrophe case is similar for low or high deductible policies, but if no catastrophe happens, one has saved significantly, while getting a better and more convenient model of care for $60/month, less than a phone bill.