By KIRBY ROSS
Phillips County Review
LOGAN — Remember the good old days when health care was affordable? When medical providers made house calls, and when getting a few stitches in a cut cost about the same amount as filling your car with gas?
Well, actually you probably don’t remember those days, but you heard about them. Or have seen them on TV.
Nowadays, the cost of simple medical procedures can bring lower income patients to their knees financially, even if they have health insurance. And forget it, if they don’t have insurance–time to cue up the bankruptcy attorney. Even higher income families with insurance might have to empty their bank accounts for some procedures.
Consider the story of a local individual who recently had an ugly cut on his hand. It was $500 just to walk through the door of the emergency room. $500!
Then add another $250 on top of that to have a doctor spend five minutes applying the medical glue that is available for the type of cut that a few stitches might once have closed.
Total tab for the visit–$750. And with co-pays, and deductibles, ch-ching, time to pull out your checkbook and start writing.
Now try to envision cutting your hand the same way, and going to a medical clinic that provides Direct Primary Care, and getting that same procedure done at no cost.
No cost. As in zero dollars.
In today’s era of high-dollar-break-the-bank medical care, there’s now a growing movement within the medical community called Direct Primary Care that is edging healthcare in this very different direction.
And, in partnership with the Dane G. Hansen Foundation and the City of Logan, the Logan Medical Clinic is one such healthcare facility that has just embraced it. The Logan Clinic, which originally began operating many years ago, began its new business model under the supervision of Dr. Daniel J. Sanchez, M.D., just last month.
Of course, in life there are no free lunches, nor is there free medical care. But the Direct Primary Care program that Logan has adopted comes as close to it as is possible in today’s world, by moving it in the direction of being very, very affordable.
Individuals can access medical care at the Logan Medical Clinic by becoming members at these monthly rates:
$10 — 0-18 years
$50 — 19-44 years
$60 — 45-64 years
$70 — 65+ years
The Clinic does not accept insurance, with the tradeoff being that once a person is a member, here is what the Clinic charges for various types of medical care:
House calls–free. You read that right–house calls. Something that hasn’t been seen in America since Howdy Doody ruled the airwaves.
And those Logan Clinic house calls–they’re free.
Office visits–free.
School physicals–free.
Nursing home visits by clinic staff–free.
After hours and weekend coverage–free.
Simple laceration repair–free.
Fracture repair and casting–free.
Testing for pap smears and other testing–discounted pricing.
“The program is designed to treat patients like they used to be treated,” says Logan Mayor Max Lowry. “We’re setting this up to be as cost effective of a delivery as you can get. Our overhead is two staff members. We’re not paying CEOs, CFOs, accountants, consultants and all the other personnel that increase medical costs so high.”
Keeping those Logan Clinic overhead costs down makes a big difference, especially when compared to the costs of paying nonmedical staff administrators, which hovers at close to a million dollars annually for some area healthcare facilities.
Another minor overhead cost for the Logan Clinic is for medical software. The Clinic pays $300 per month for it. That compares to a total upfront cost of $3.2 million paid by one area hospital, and $500,000 by another. Those same hospitals then also pay tens of thousands of dollars in yearly maintenance fees for the software on top of that.
With that lower overhead for the Logan Clinic comes less need to process patients through on an assembly line volume basis in order to maximize revenue.
“We want to treat patients as patients,” says Logan Clinic Physician’s Assistant Nancy Kisner. “With memberships we don’t have to cycle people in and out to pay for overhead.”
Kisner says, “Membership entitles you to all the services the clinic provides. Right now we are accepting members from throughout the region. The way we are setting this up, people who have never really had access to healthcare now can have it. And our ability to make house calls and treat individuals in their homes will be of real benefit to some people.”
In addition to individual memberships, Kisner says the Clinic is working on establishing family plans, and plans for small business owners.
Kisner also says “the beauty of this is, as we go along the Clinic can add more benefits. We’re looking at possibly maybe a fitness center, or physical therapy and massage therapy. If we find there is a need for footcare, maybe we can have a footcare clinic once a month. And down the road we’d like to provide mammograms and bone density tests.”
In summarizing the low-cost, readily-available healthcare the Logan Clinic is offering to the region, Kisner provides an analogy to the bygone era of country doctors and the personal care they once provided in northwest Kansas–“I like to look at us as being like Doc from Gunsmoke, or Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. Right now, working at the Logan Clinic I am treating four generations of one family. Four generations! It’s so fulfilling. Practicing this type of medicine without having to focus on volumes of patients and being able to know the people in the community so well helps me to better determine the needs of the patient, and to see somebody who might be slipping through the cracks.”
With Logan being geographically located near the intersection point of the four-counties region, Phillips, Rooks, Graham and Norton county residents would seem to be a natural constituency for the Clinic.
The Clinic currently covers general healthcare needs, and not more serious health matters. Costs of treatment after referrals to outside providers and specialists, or transfers to hospitals, have to be covered by the patient.
But the way the program works, and with the Affordable Care Act teetering on the brink of insolvency, one possible option for individuals might be to join the Clinic to have their ordinary healthcare needs seen to, and then buy a catastrophic health insurance policy for more serious needs. A consultation with a health insurance provider would help clarify these issues.
For more information, the Logan Medical Clinic can be reached at 785-689-7464. or [email protected].