Reimagining Insurance: Direct Primary Care Meets Virtuous Benefits

[Music] welcome to the unto take a deep breath take the higher Road that's what they always say as if they know the way they won't take it from me but don't ever doubt yourself CU life in just a dream you made your own so kick and scream the people like with a never ending Force you never had the chance so watch and waiting for the day has come my friend cuz this is [Applause] world it's time and this [Applause] is there's a controversial topic that's been lurking in the shadows of our Healthcare System the notion that health insurance might just be a modern-day Ponzi scheme picture this you Faithfully pay your premiums month after month year after year often without seeing much in return the money you contribute doesn't go into a personal health savings account instead it is used to pay for other people's current medical needs while you hope there will be enough left when it's your turn to claim sound familiar it should because that is the basic structure of a Ponzi scheme early investors are paid with the money from new invest investors rather than from actual profits but here's where it gets even more interesting insurance companies aren't just passively managing this flow of money they are actively working to maximize their profits by denying claims raising premiums and creating complex rules that often leave policy holders confused and frustrated and just like a Ponzi scheme the system relies on a constant influx of new healthy participants to keep it afloat without them the whole structure threatens tooll collap under the weight of increasing health care costs and an aging population so as we dive deeper into this topic we need to challenge our assumptions about health insurance and ask ourselves is this really the best way to ensure health care for all or are we all unwitting participants and a grand Financial illusion you're listening to nurses out loud on America out loud talk radio I'm your host nurse Kimberly Overton before we get started today I do want to encourage our listeners if you have questions or comments or perhaps you want to share your own experiences with what you're seeing on the front lines of healthcare you can now submit those to any of the hosts by emailing them directly to nurses amout loud.com we would love to hear from you we encourage all of you to engage in the battle and find your voice in this fight but until you are able to do that we will continue to be that voice for you today I want to talk to you about a game-changing force in the world of insurance virtuous benefits this independent agency is not just another player in the field they are revolutionizing how we think about health insurance and employee care imagine a world where your company can offer top tier health benefits without breaking the bank sounds too good to be true right well virtuous benefits is making the dream a reality in an era where skyrocketing healthare costs are the norm virtuous benefits has dared to challenge the status quote they've ingeniously crafted a way to bypass those traditional overpriced health insurance plans that have been bleeding businesses dry for far too long but they're not just cutting cost they are elevating care picture this your employees have access to premium Health Care Services the kind usually reserved for those with the deepest Pockets we're talking about Swift access to top Physicians cuttingedge treatments and personalized care that makes your team feel truly valued and the best part is that you are achieving all of this while seeing unprecedented savings virtuous benefits isn't just an agency it's a movement they are on a mission to prove that Quality Health Care and affordability can go hands inand they are showing us that we don't have to choose between taking care of our employees and maintaining a healthy bottom line their Innovative approach is sending shock waves through the industry challenging other providers to step up their game it's not just about insurance it's about investing in your most valuable asset your people with virtuous benefits you're not just choosing an insurance provider you are choosing a partner dedicated to the well-being of your business and your employees joining me today to explore the exciting Synergy between virtuous benefits and direct Primary Care is near Patel and Angel Sao near Patel is an engineer by degree but an entreprene entrepreneur at heart after helping build and grow his wife Dr Katrina ik bal's direct primary care practice called direct Med DPC throughout Central Texas over the past nine years by shielding patients from the broken Health Care System he learned that the group health insurance system was also severely broken and started working with employer groups to teach them how to break free from it this is when near met Angel saso and virtuous benefits was founded in 2020 virtuous benefits is truly a full agency that helps employers of all sizes across the country successfully Implement ACA compliant healthcare insurance plans that are affordable transparent and that provide employees and their families with the highest quality DPC care they've ever had while minimizing and oftentimes eliminating their out-of-pocket cost along with lowering the employer Health Plan cost year-over-year Angel Sao has been a health insurance adviser for over 15 years he has worked for agencies of all sizes from startups to publicly traded companies as a published author he has always seen the value in constantly learning and finding Creative Solutions for his clients currently he is a senior partner at virtuous benefits an insurance agency that incorporates DPC memberships into ACA compliant health plans that do not have any network restrictions virtuous benefits has successfully helped many companies of all sizes across the country lower the cost of their health insurance by focusing employee education around DPC and Open Access Health Plans which have no network restrictions Angel understands the struggle that businesses face on a regular basis in order to maintain profitability as well as the tremendous impacts that a comprehensive group benefits package can have towards a company's success he firmly believes that taking care of a company's employees is a fiduciary investment which creates a better work environment and increase productivity for the businesses that he serves near angel thank you guys so much for being here with me today thanks so much too glad you absolutely I'm excited to learn more about this very very unique model uh that you've created so I guess to you know to start out if you just want to tell me how does virtuous benefits model fundamentally differ from the traditional employee benefit packages you know that we've become so I will say use the word conditioned uh conditioned to use what makes your model so revolutionary for me it's we use DPC that is the core of what we do if you look at our logo if you look at our motto the heart of our strategy is DPC uh and of course that's a very different type of care than people are used to no more short visits no more you know reactive Care Sick care a doctor that is truly uh there to serve you and to help you be proactive about your health stay healthy get healthy understand what healthy is and that's what people need because what they have now is the opposite and so that is one of the things that makes us very very different right no doubt I'm sorry go ahead near yeah I was just gonna say no doubt direct primary care and direct specialty care which is a movement of Specialists doing the same things as the the DPC doctors are now doing are the core and the center of our strategy um in addition to that we're we're helping kind of change some of the things that happen uh on the insurance side and going behind the curtains showing transparency that doesn't exist rating premiums logically and removing bloated networks right and that's interesting that you said that about the direct specialist care because I haven't really seen I didn't actually know that that was something that was kind of growing and it's something that I've been wanting to see for quite some time is the Specialists getting into this because that's great when we have the direct primary care but you know there are times when we do need to see Specialists and again that throws us back into you know the mainstream system which really does nothing to serve patients in my opinion you know I've worked in in healthcare for 28 years so I've seen this system and and how it works and it typically is not for the benefit of the patient absolutely so one of I'm sorry go ahead angel I was GNA say just to add to that one of the things educate folks on is that doctors when they go to school all they do is learn about how to help people but as soon as they work for an insurance Network or an insurance company all of a sudden that changes because now it's about what's going to make us more money so we're happy to educate doctors that they can actually go back and practice medicine the way they went to school for and really the purpose of why they're trying to help people yeah because so many Physicians they do get into this because they have a desire to help people to help get people healthy and well and I think a lot of them are very disillusioned when they come into the system and they realize how how extremely broken to the severity of the broken system um and and it becomes more about productivity you know how many I I know that when I was there I believe it's like they're seeing one patient every seven minutes is about average I don't know how we can even know somebody's name and seven minutes never mind their medical history and all of that so it's it's very concerning and by the time that they make it through medical school now they have all of these uh loans to pay off so they are very attracted to these larger corporate entities right and in my opinion the corporatization of medicine was the death of it but that is kind of where where it's gone because with these corporate jobs they are oftentimes offering things like guaranteed salary to me I feel like sometimes the doctors are selling their soul do you have an opinion on that my wife certainly felt that way when she came out of training and quickly realized you know they're they're forcing me to see 40 patients a day by myself and they're bonusing me based on how many patients I can get in and out the door and this is not genuine medicine I have to have one hand on the door while someone's crying telling me about some traumatic event that happened because I have 15 other people in 15 other rooms to see and so she got disillusioned very quickly and realized yeah this is not what I want to do for the next 30 or 40 years and I need to find something else uh which is where she found the DPC model but yeah she she absolutely felt like she was selling her soul when she was working in the insurance world yeah and I think that it it's you know I I I always say because I I think that Physicians are inherently good and like I said they get in it for the right reasons but it's almost like you just have to fall in line with with the system unfortunately and it's a system that as I that I've been a part of for so many decades now it really doesn't do anything to keep anybody well it doesn't focus on health prevention Wellness typically by the time somebody's coming in to see these doctors they are already um into a progressive disease and it's comes more about symptom management right it comes to pushing Pharmaceuticals like if you're having high blood pressure they're going to give you a medication for to control your blood pressure but they typically don't have a plan to ever get you off of it and they're never addressing the root cause inside the system so that's what I really love about direct Primary Care is that they have the time to really especially if you're in like a functional medicine which is is what I always recommend um you're into more holistic AU s it definitely gives you more time to focus on that patient find the root cause and then eradicate it absolutely we uh we practice functional medicine in our practice as well and it's been a GameChanger uh for you know helping patients get to the root of their issues and actually figuring out why do you have this problem and how do we reverse it or prevent it from occurring in the first place and I think as we go through this conversation we'll will uncover some of the reasons why insurance companies are not incentivized to proactively keep people healthy right let's touch on that let's let's talk about that um and there are a lot of incentives to Physicians uh many times in to prescribe certain medications definitely that's that's where we touch on or part of our education to employers is really understanding how the network is designed to work because the sales pitch is always the same you have access to all of these doctors in network just show your card pay your premium pay your copay and it all works right you don't have to do any of the negotiation you don't have to just get the care that you need however what is not told to you is that the more you use the network the more money the insurance company makes because every aspect of that network has a markup or what they call Administration costs so to your point if they prescribe medications there's a markup on that that means they're making Revenue there the more they send you to a specialist Specialists are more expensive there's a markup on that so it's really the design of the network to not just keep you there but keep you coming back so that the insurance company is able to drive more claims which allows them to make more profit right and let's talk about some of the ways that virtuous benefits that your model how does it address the rising health care cost that's a a real issue uh in in our society how does it address the issue of these Rising health care costs that both employers and employees are facing one of the common misconceptions that people have of healthcare is that everything within healthcare is expensive right and that's why to most consumers I need insurance because I can't afford anything but the reality when you start looking at what things cost is that for the most part things are very reasonable MRIs x-rays generic medication even uh doctor visits where it be to a specialist or a primary care those are fairly reasonable but when you add a network markup on top of that all of a sudden that does no longer become affordable and a couple examples we give one is blood work right if you were to go to a dpz physician and get five different labs done that would average about $50 right depending on the lab that you got but if you run that through an insurance plan that charges 10 times more for the same lab all of a sudden that's $500 right to the average person they can't afford that and MRI again is you're told it's very expensive but the average MRI around the country is about $500 but when you run it through again a network insurance plan that adds markups because they make money off that it becomes 2500 5,000 it's really all over the place depending on the contract they have with that provider so now that becomes unaffordable because of the markups that the network is adding every step of the way exactly I I try to tell this to people all all the time you're oftentimes better as a self-pay than you are having Insurance because you can negotiate at many times at a a very good rate and they are typically very reasonable but it's unfortunate that we are so as a society we are so conditioned as you mentioned earlier to believe that we all have to have health insurance and this this really isn't the case I am usually um recommending people to have a um High deductible catastrophic plan just in case something were to happen but for your everyday needs like you said the labs are a very inexpensive the MRIs all of all of these things and your generic prescription medications they're all very affordable but it's really about changing people's mindset so their their education is what's needed we really need to start educating people and have helping them to change that mindset and one of the things we do at virtuous benefits is we build health plans for employers right because we understand that everyone has a different income level a different financial needs and so sometimes you need your insurance to cover that $10 lab that $500 MRI and so we build the these health plans that will cover those things but they will pay the actual cost of care not the bloated insurance Price and so when you start doing that not only are you able to better offer a better health plan but you're also able to maintain the low cost and to the point where year over-year our plans our rates are actually reduced for our clients and they start building a little Nest EG for your for themselves which allows them to behave almost like their own insurance company reaping the benefit of good years and paying for claims uh because claims may come but paying for the actual cost of claims when they do right now do you feel like your model is contributing to creating a culture of Wellness how is it going to create a culture of Wellness within an organization so if I were if I have a company and I want to you know partner with virtuous benefits do do you feel like this creates a culture of Wellness or how does it do that within our organization and you know what how does that going to impact overall productivity for my employees I absolutely feel like um our health plans promote a culture of wellness and it's mainly because of how we structure them right DPC direct primary care and DSC direct Specialty Care are the core or the center of our health plans and when you work with doctors who are genuine and who want to do the right thing which is take good care of their patients uh and are allowed to do that that's the big difference most doctors want to take good care of their patients but most doctors aren't allowed to do that because they work for a third-party payer like an insurance company so when you work with doctors like dsc's and dpc's they don't have those Insurance handcuffs right they have their own independent practices where they charge a reasonable membership fee for dpcs and a reasonable um fee for service fee for gsc's and they are leading their own practice it's a physician Le practice and it's independent without any corporate influence that's when all the magic starts to happen and these doctors their incentive is how do I keep my patients healthy for the long term right how do I take the highest quality care of them so that they stay healthy for as long as possible that's their incentive when they're not incentivized to keep someone essentially sick and keep them coming in so they can keep filling their insurance over and over again right because they will give you that prescription for the pharmaceutical and then they'll have you come back in three months you know they'll say that they need to do a follow-up visit at you know Insurance dictates maybe it's three months maybe it's six months and they do they keep you coming back and they create a customer for life and it's just it's really fortunate and most people you know but it's the the DPC is a game changer it truly is but again most people are not looking at the bigger picture they're saying oh I can't afford you know maybe it's $50 or maybe it's $100 a month for that DPC model but they're not thinking about when most of the time because it's coming out of their paycheck they're not thinking about everything that they pay in insurance for their premium and then on top of that they're paying their deductible and then they're paying co-pays so they're not taking all of those things into consideration when we if we could eliminate all of that and you know then you know $100 a month is not so bad especially when you are seeing a physician that is going to invest in your health and invest in your wellness and I always like to tell people you know you're going to pay um for you know you're going to pay for this one way or the other either on the front end you're going to pay for your health or on the back end in with disease and despair you're going to pay for it somewhere i' like to share a personal experience Kimberly about during this process what I have learned uh really what is healthy because one of the things that people don't realize is or if you ask the average person hey are you healthy they'll say well I have no immediate pain I have no marks or you know rashes on my skin I'm I'm healthy I feel fine but when you start looking at their blood work you know where their vitamins at where their minerals at what their blood pressure is at what their blood sugar is at now you start getting the scientific answer of what is healthy and part of that is what we teach employees because again if they don't know what healthy is how can they actually take the most value out of a DPC and so when they go now to see their dpcs and they understand how to look at their blood work the simple lifestyle changes that they can make to adjust or even understanding you know why I'm so tired all the time so many people are vitamin D deficient um and that's part of it so part of this education that we do is sharing with employees you have to learn what healthy is so that you can now be on the lookout for that yeah I I completely agree with you and you know there there's so much out there that people don't understand and they don't they don't know about like I mean they're coming at us from every angle if you ask me between um you know the the pharmaceutical products that we ingest the food that we eat the air that we breathe there are so many just toxins we our toxic burden is very heavy in in this society and we have got to be able to recognize that and find ways to combat it I I often um talk about the need for for regular detoxification because of that very reason that we we do have such a a heavy toxic load on us but many people just don't realize that and they don't understand the dangers of these multiple pharmaceutical products that they're taking that typically lead to you know other other issues other the side effect effects Le to other issues which then the doctor will typically put you on another prescription medication you know as an ICU nurse my average patient was on probably 25 to 30 pharmaceutical products wow and that to me is a failure that's a that's not a Health Care System that's a sickcare system abely I'm glad you brought that up because yeah that's the other thing that we do differently within our health plans is you know practitioners that quote quote don't take insurance right like different therapies for autistic children and things like that um functional medicine type providers that are um are doing alternative you know care therapies um we can we can cover all of those things right because everybody everybody has a price for what they do and we pay every provider and facility in the country money because that's what they take and so as long as a provider or practitioner can provide a super bill or some sort of receipt that has a description of what they did we can cover that or we can put that towards someone's deductible you know I think that's amazing I think that's amazing because functional medicine practitioners you know it's unless they're getting the HSA funds you know typically insurance plans don't cover these types of uh more holistic practitioners which is really unfortunate so I love to hear that I'd love to hear that you're doing that even with health sharing I had some experience with health sharing and I thought that that would be a good alternative but even even those um are not paying out to these more holistic providers so I think just giving people the option to to see the type of practitioner they want that's huge that they don't have to be a part of this of this broken system any longer we've got to continue to find ways to you know work around it um and I think by doing that the more the more we kind of we we just raised the bar a little bit right because the problem is not that the standard of care in this country is not being met it's the standard of care in this country is so disgustingly low that's the problem so and you know many times in the Health Care System the standard of care is being met but it is so so low but when we come alongside of this broken system and we're offering Alternatives and options for people they have no choice but to raise the bar um and raise their standards in order to remain relevant would you agree absolutely what that's the beauty of building your own health plan is you get to dictate what is covered and what is not and as an employer you can also incentivize you can let employees know hey if you use some of of these other avenues or if you're taking care of yourself we'll cover it through the plan so now there's an incentive for the employee not only is it better for me but the plan will pay for it so that's an additional incentive that the employee has to use those resources that's amazing so in what ways do you feel like virtuous benefits that your model can be a game Cher for these small to mediumsized businesses that are struggling to offer competitive benefits packages because they are so expensive but they want to take care of their people but it's it's just difficult everything costs so much money these days so how can this model be a game Cher for these small to mediumsized companies so when we speak to an employer and we're educating them on all the things that we do different we're able to lower the cost of the care as we've been mentioning by lowering or paying the actual cost of that uh of the health care which means you're reducing that Network overage and so when we're building these plans we say look number one let's get a rate that's based on your company's health because when there's no health questions or no underwriting depending on the size of your company then you're basically letting the insurance company give you a rate and they're not going to lose money so that if they don't know what risk they're getting into then you will always be overcharged right and so that's one of the first things we do is we go through an underwriting process with our clients and now we get a rate that's based on the actual risk of those businesses and particularly small to medium businesses every single one of those employees is showing up to work which means you have to be fairly healthy uh it's very hard to be very sick or constantly out and keep a job and so when these small employer small to medium uh have a relatively healthy Workforce giving that information to an insurance company allows them to give you a lower a lower risk which means your lower premiums and so from there now you can incentivize employees to take care of themselves to include DPC and and build your own plan and because you know have the greedy networks behind you you're able to reduce that plan 25 30% and even more year-over-year that's amazing I'm so glad to see that there is something that is is coming you know alongside of the DPC which I think personally I think that's the way medicine needs to go is to the DPC model so to see something like this coming alongside of the DPC practices and and making these options available is is very exciting for me personally um we have so much more to dig into but we're going to have to take a short break when we come back we will get more into the nuts and bolts of how this model Works America out loud talk radio plays on the iHeart Radio Network you can also listen on our media player from any web browser anywhere in the world we have the best in-class apps available on Apple Android or Alexa 247 great talk radio 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stories the Articles the podcasts and videos so we can help secure America's future if you're just joining us I've been talking with co-founders of virtuous benefits near Patel and Angel saso let's jump right back in all right guys so we've had a really interesting uh conversation talking about virtuous benefits the DPC and all the Synergy between these two models um I want to talk a little bit about why are we not hearing from advisers why are they not telling people and shouting this from the rooftop that's the question that we always get um especially with larger employers who are typically working with a national agency or very renowned agency and they're like why isn't my guy or my broker adviser talking about this if this is as good as you say it is and so for that you really have to understand how advisors are paid and how are they incentivized most advisors or Brokers are pay a commission based on premium so what that means is but when your premiums go up their commissions go up so they're getting a raise every time your premiums go up and for the first part of my career I was your typical insurance agent selling all the network plans that everybody knows and so as I was coming to the renewal meeting making those excuses of why insurance is so expensive and you know encouraging the employer to just stick to it you know it is what it is I was walking out with more money right and that's on top of the incentives that the carriers give you you know uh bonuses trips all of these things that from an advisor stand you're thinking okay if I just keep giving them the same thing or consolidate my book of business as one carrier guess what I make more money so why would they choose to reduce the cost of your premiums if that's going to mean a pay cup for them so that's the main reason you don't hear about this as much as you should that's one of the reasons why in just in general I feel like incentivized healthcare we we need to address this this is a real problem in this country in our society um incentivized medicine is not healthare I don't even understand how it's legal I'll be honest with you I just don't understand how it's legal um but we've seen this over and over again with the financial incentives and how um we've gone from you know truly caring for patients and and getting to the roof cuse and treating people like individuals because Healthcare is not one siiz fits all yet we are in a system that is very heavily protocol driven everything is protocol medicine do you see that as well absolutely yeah everything's an algorithm right it's h it's dock in the Box model where it's all sick care it's all reactive you show up the doctor listens for the symptoms and says okay the algorithms says to give him this med yep exactly and I also want to touch on the legality that you had mentioned about why is this legal you know it's shocking to me and I asked the same question why how is this legal and allowed especially when there's Stark law for Physicians yeah right they can't they can't do any of this any of these things with financial incentives and kickbacks but the insurance companies are allowed to do it all day long and a lot of doctors will saywell we're not financially incentivized well you typically don't see it with your smaller you know small private physician practices but it's in in the corporate Health Care environment that you see more of these Financial incentives I mean Co was the perfect example when we saw covid uh come on the scene and we everything was tied to financial incentives um it was the same thing with the vaccine when the vaccine rolled out but the the protocol you know we were seeing these top- down NIH protocols um that were really dictating the type of treatment that we were giving in um in the hospitals I worked in the ICU at the time and you know I started seeing patients they were treated with um an the antiviral REM dese which is very harmful to patients but it was financially incentivized and I couldn't so that was one of the big questions that I had was why you know were we giving these patients an antiviral medication when they by the time that they got to us and the ER or the ICU they were well past their replication phase several days into their symptomatic phase yet we were giving them this medication that was clearly going to be ineffective right but so that was my one question and then my bigger question was why is the government financially incentivizing its use but we see that over and over again we saw the uh Financial incentivization to place patients on ventilators and then I saw people um pushing for early intubation was a big thing during Co and this was perhaps the most egregious thing I'd ever seen in my nearly 30 years in healthcare because it was no longer about the patient in the bed and they were saying it they were doing it in such a way to say that it was to protect the healthare worker because um once you place that patient on the ventilator it's a Clos loop system virus was no longer disseminated into the air right so then it's not about the patient in the bed any longer and to me that was just the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen because that's not a procedure that it does doesn't come with risk that's a very high-risk procedure and 80% of those patients we plac on ventilators we knew weren't going to make it off so it's those types of financial incentivization that we've we've got to combat this something has to be done to change the trajectory because more people are going to die absolutely yeah it's it's a it's a sad situation but I want to hear a little bit more about your model because you're not just your typical agency you have a care navigation model so you really get into the weeds with these people like you are pretty much walking them through this entire process so the way that makes it go for the way that we uh present our plans right when we do employee presentations is we help the employees understand you no longer have Blue Cross or United Healthcare they're fired we we now created a health plan that's built specifically for the employees and your company and we introduce a host of DPC Physicians that we've hand chosen to take care of that particular group and we bring them to the meeting with us so that they can speak from the heart directly to the employees that they're going to be taken care of about why they chose to leave traditional medicine and a large salary to open their own independent practice and start from scratch and that really resonates with the employees that really um I think is very surprising to them because they've just never seen that level of uh of you know employee presentation where a physician comes and speaks genuinely about why they want to take care of this group of individuals and on top of that we also explained to the employees this is your DPC physician they're going to take care of 90 plus% of your care in a very high quality way and then when they tell you you need to go outside their office for literally anything a medication an image a specialist whatever it is virtuous benefits is your DPC agency and you can think about us like your Healthcare coner right so you're going to just call text or email us you're going to let us know who you are and what you need and we're going to help you get it done very smoothly um and we are upfront with the employees is that if they try to use a card that has their company's name on it and no recognized network name because of the educational issue out there most front desk people at offices and facilities are going to say we've never heard of this insurance we don't take it and so we're very upfront with employees because we don't want them to experience that so we let them know just shoot us a text phone call or email the same way you reach out to your DPC physician let us know who you are and what you need and we'll get back to you right away and we'll help you get it done and that way there's no disruption and everything goes smoothly you test on the network so you don't have any network restrictions how does that work that's that's amazing tell me a little bit more about how that works with no network restriction it's really reaching out to Providers and asking them what is their cash price because as you mentioned you there's self-paid price if you have no insurance you can say hey I'm a private pay person and so they're they have a price sheet right it's just when you are paid more by an insurance company the incentive is old well what's your insurance but everybody has a price and so we do that on behalf of our clients reach out to Providers ask them what their cash price is and the other thing that we do which is another issue providers sometimes have when when they don't know who's going to pay is we preload virtual debit cards so that now the patient just shows up pays for what they need at the time of service there's no delay in paying the provider and then get the care they need at lead right that's as simple as you can get um we were on another podcast not too long ago and uh they said it's just like buying bread right you go you pay your money and you get the goods that you need that's how Healthcare should be right but when you add a third party sometimes it complicates it when that third party one wants to make money that that complicates it right so we make it very very simple and as near mentioned we're telling every single employee you don't have to do any of that right please call us please reach out to us we're happy to do it for you uh because in my 15 years of experience uh selling insurance insurance at its very core as a promise right saying I will be there when you need me and if you are not there when they need you guess what you are not going to have a long career so we can't just say oh you don't need a network nwork restrictions we have to follow up on that promise and we're happy to because that's what people need to get in a GE without an insurance Network right and DPC practices are growing all across the country but do you have representation do you are you do you have DPC practices that you work with in all 50 states absolutely uh in the 10 years that I've been in the DP DPC space helping my wife uh with her practice I have seen new DPC practices opening up every single month and it's been going on even longer than I've been involved um I would say probably for uh 20 years that's been going on and over the last 10 it's just happened that much more uh exponentially but yeah DPC I mean Physicians are not happy working in the traditional model especially in Primary Care um and so you know one of the big hurdles they have is I come out of I come out of school Med just medical school with half a million dollars in loans and so the last thing I can think about is trying to open my own practice but I want to encourage those Physicians to continue to explore this model because it is not expensive to open a DPC practice and I'm happy to help anybody that you know that wants to explore that further um but yeah it's uh it's something that is is a solution for a lot of Physicians that are just lost they're like you know I learned so much genuiness from my mentors in medical school and residency and then I started working in the traditional system and everything is just completely different than what I thought it was going to be and not in a good way and there is a solution for those doctors and and it's Direct Care Now do you think I know I know that I had started I worked with a physician um in the ICU and I I helped him to build up his DPC practice when first came on the scene now he did not leave um his his Hospital job he was a hospitalist and he continued to work in that position while he started up his DPC practice so I think that's important to um to let people know because I think a lot of people you know same with the nurses when I I try to get them to they're they're really ready to walk away from the broken system and start something else but they're afraid because they don't like they're thinking where are my patients going to come from and you know am I going to be able to get the word out about what I'm doing and and you know will I be able to match and um you know compare with the salary that I have now so I think it's important to note that you can start a DPC practice while you're doing um other other things within you know if you're in the hospital or other traditional jobs you can start off because you're starting off and you're growing your practice and as you start to grow you can kind of scale back the other is has that been your experience as well absolutely yeah we have seven Physicians right now that work for us at direct Med DPC in Austin Texas and um all of them for the most part do some sort of side work when they first start including my wife when she first started um because I mean let's face it we have to pay the bills right we all have families we all have responsibilities and bills that we have to pay and and it's okay you can do that you can work uh you can Moonlight you can work PRN you can do what you need to do to bring in the income that you need to support your family and your household while you're building a DPC practice um and it's been proven over and over again that that's that's absolutely something that you can do what do you think are some of the biggest challenges when people when Physicians make that decision that they want to go the DPC route what are some of the biggest challenges that uh or hurdles that they have to face I think to me uh they're more perceived hurdles right um you know how much uh or or I'm going to need a traditional office space that's expensive with a long-term lease and has a bunch of rooms and a lab and a waiting room and a front desk um uh I don't know how to you know create a website and you know I don't know how to create patient forms or what attorneys to work with there's you know all the all the things that that any business owner would face as far as startup things not only um you know the medical side of it but also the the business startup side of it and I just want to encourage everybody that's listening that's a healthcare uh practitioner that wants to explore this the resources are already laid out for you um when we started our practice 10 years ago there were 100 150 dpcs around the country and everybody was figuring it out on their own now there are thousands around the country and we have all laid the the groundwork and we're all here to help so any dpcs that you know I've ever reached out to or that reach out to me they're always more than willing to help we're always more than willing to help there's there's a plethora of resources uh physician groups and things like that that will be able to help and none of this will cost anybody a cent um so there's there's there's just so so much help out there there really there really are a lot of resources for DPC practices and me and like you mentioned everybody is so willing to help I think that we're kind of all United in the the fact that we really want to get out of this broken system and whatever we can do you know to help one another to move forward you know we're we're ready to do that and we're happy to do it and I've belonged to a lot of uh like Facebook groups and things on DPC practices and it's it's not um you know and whenever anybody poses a question maybe a new physician or somebody that's thinking about going the DPC route there is never a shortage of people that are are you know willing to share their positive experiences and willing to like hey we'll jump on a call with you and you know we'll walk you through the whole process so it's really been um you know really heartening to see people coming together like that because it's not about competition right I think collaboration is the way forward and the more that we can collaborate with one another and understanding that there are enough people you know that need help out there and we can't take care of everybody right but the the importance of making sure that everybody is receiving um safe appropriate care you know that's kind of the Common Thread I love the way you said that it's it's not about competition it's about collaboration because that is exactly what's going on in the Direct Care world yeah it really it has to be about all of us coming together because think about what like I mean we are fighting this giant right these giant these corporate uh Giants and the the fight is too big for anyone in individual any one physician anyone you know Organization for us to do it alone we've got to be able to come together and work together for the greater good and to make sure that there are alternatives out there for people because this is what's missing in our society and if we want to move forward and have uh people healthy and thriving then this is this is just what needs to happen we need to come together and we need to you know move forward this is the way to do it w 100% agree take advantage of all the DPC conferences that happen year-over year you'll find that community and that collaboration every single time excellent well we are I can't believe we're running out of time I said to you when we when we started it really does go by very very quickly but if you had to leave our listeners with you know one last thought and include please where they can find your uh your your website we will include all of this in the show notes so that they can easily get to you um but just what is your your final thoughts for our listeners today yeah so we really appreciate everyone who's listening today and um if you're an employer and you're struggling with you know we can't we can't give raises this year again because Health Care took its place um we're we're wanting to offer something that makes sense and that's affordable and that our employees can actually get healthier with and that they can afford the costs um reach out to us you know we'll be happy to schedule a meeting with you to kind of walk you through our path and what that looks like um you can go to our website www. virtuous benefits. care you can live chat with us there you can call us or text us at 51288 73011 and you can even email us at info@ virtuous benefits. care we'd love to hear from you I just want to say thank you Kimberly for having us it's been a real pleasure um and as far as what I'd leave employers a lot of companies have their insurance renewed January 1st and they wait until their renewal to then start the process let's see what's out there let's get some quotes I would encourage employers do not wait until your renewal you're going to have questions you're going to want to go through different scenarios because this is new right and as much as you're unhappy with the networks and the insurance you have you're going to want to get all of these questions answered and so start earlier than your renewal call us now call us in a week please make sure to educate yourself before your renewal gets here excellent well thank you guys both for joining me I think this is just incredible information that we really need to push out into the mainstream so the more that we can talk about on the direct Primary Care model and alternatives to Insurance alternative shipping PHA you know we need to put that information out there as much as we can so again I will make sure that all of this information is included in the show notes uh so that you listeners can uh contact virtuous benefits and certainly I would highly recommend that you do take a deep look into this and how it can benefit your company and your employees and that is all the time that we have for today friends but remember we are here on the air 5 days a week Monday through Friday at 10:00 a.m. eastern with a different nurse host daily you can also catch the Encore at 11:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time please be sure to tune in and listen to myself and my amazing sister nurses as we walk you through all of these Hot Topics we will Empower you with information and education we will Advocate and we will stand in the gap for you because we are nurses and this is what we do I'm your host nurse Kimberly Overton you can find me here every Wednesday morning at 10:00 a.m. eastern until next time be safe be well and God bless remember remember that we are in a war for truth we are putting out a bounty on the real misinformation and exposing the purveyors of propaganda no topic is off limits as we shine our lights and expose the [Music] darkness it's time this [Applause] is It's Time and this is [Applause] [Music] oh w