By Chris Barakat – First Primary Care
5 Tips to properly implement DPC in your health plan (from experience not ChatGPT)
1. Have a carrot in your plan that when DPC is the initiator of care, the plan will waive the OOP costs for the member
2. Make Open Enrollment compulsory and make sure your DPC vendor presents at the OE meeting. We do this at First Primary Care and it is now a non-negotiable if a broker wants us embedded in the plan.
3. DPCs should be delivering 95% of the care virtually, not in-person. So make sure employees have time to meet face to face with the DPC vendor. The DPC vendor should be coming onsite. If they won’t (you may want to find a new one) OR give your members PTO to spend time to establish a working relationship.
4. Make sure the TPA has a data flow of claims from as close to day 1 as possible, so the DPC vendor is able to identify egregious claims, assist members with alternative approaches (like international sourcing, PAPs, MAPs, etc) and to be proactive with new member diagnosis.
5. Don’t just slap DPC as an add on. Have a clear strategy and give the DPC vendor the bandwidth to not just deliver great care, but to also curb costs within the clinic and outside the clinic.
If “DPCs should be delivering 95% of the care virtually, not in-person” why pay $50, $80, $100 or $125 a month when you can use any number of virtual care providers in the market today for less than $20?
