Dr. Leslie Surbeck felt like she was always telling her patients she was sorry. As a primary care physician in a busy clinic operated by a major health care system, she said she often had to apologize to her patients for running late, for being hard to reach or having a fully booked schedule, the Minnesota Post reports.
This wasn’t the way she wanted to practice medicine. “Year after year of continually having to say you’re sorry to people for running behind does take an emotional toll,” she said.
When the health care organization decided to restructure her clinic and move physicians to other locations, Surbeck took it as a sign that she should do something different. She began looking into new ways to practice medicine.
One option she discovered was direct primary care (DPC), a model of medicine where patients pay physicians directly, based on a fixed monthly fee, without sending claims to insurance providers. In a DPC model, physicians are able to see fewer patients, allowing them to be more responsive and to spend more time with each appointment. Read more.
