Trial by Jury: Direct Examination

Hippocrates once said: “Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least to do no harm”

Your Honor, counsel, ladies and gentlemen of the jury - today on trial we have the our healthcare system.

Thank you. I heard it once said “We all end up dead, it's just a question of how and why.” Tell me, healthcare system, look over here and tell us: Are you proud of the things you've done? Turning millions of people into puppets, and doctors into drones. Is this a game? Do you realize how many people are drowning in a system believing they have no choice? Well the time is now; no more excuses. I call healthcare coverage to take to the stand and accuse him of killing independence, stealing transparency, and of intellectual abuse. 

Your Honor, this concludes my opening statement, and if I may present the opening of my case, the evidence is overwhelming and I’m here right now to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

Prepare to proceed.

Exhibit one is received and marked as evidence: Here’s your auto insurance. Look familiar? We use it for the major wreck. Not for gas, oil changes, or brake pads…that would be crazy, right?

Exhibit two is received and marked as evidence: Here’s your home insurance. Look familiar? Again, we use it for the major event. Not for air filters, housekeeping or light bulbs…that would be crazy too, right?

Well, check this out:

Exhibit three is received and marked as evidence: Here before you is modern day health coverage. We use it for the major event.

But, wait. Follow me, ok? 

We also use it for… just about EV.ER.Y.THING. We use it for the medicine that only costs pennies. Swipe. We use it for the doctor’s visit that might otherwise be free. Swipe. We use it for preventative maintenance, to ask a question about a complicated diagnosis, and for support for the simple cold, virus or infection. Swipe. Swipe. Swipe. We pay big co-pays, wait weeks for appointments, sit in line for far too long, get rushed through and still get outrageous bills weeks or months later.

See the difference.

Look closer. We whip out and swipe that costly card like a kid in the penny candy store and while you take claims & we complain that the cost keeps going up, access to quality primary care keeps going down. Now that my friends, is a bloody shame.

And yet you claim, no pun intended, to protect the people you say you help cover? Unnecessary claims filed. Conflicts of interest. Costs go up. Premiums people struggle to pay.

Coverage doesn’t guarantee or equal good or affordable CARE.

Yet with evidence like that I need to ask: Why don’t you educate & empower people with the truth & tools so they can access and afford great primary care? Why not give them options for care where they can carry their doctor’s number in their pocket, allowing for support and expertise with predictable cost, and so they can still put food on the table, remain at work instead of wasting time sitting in an overcrowded waiting room, build up a little savings, and prepare for the future? 

Wait, you can do that?

YES, Your Honor and I would ask the court to instruct the defendant to provide transparent costs.

Your Honor, may the jury be instructed to disregard?

I did a background check on you and please let the record show, that you traded transparency for a smoke filled room and everyone is choking. Could you tell the jury why you’ve swapped and squashed resourceful, intelligent physicians from maintaining their freedom to excel, and created ones that are burned out from checking boxes, wrapped in rolls of red tape so tight they can hardly breathe. 

You say ‘Well it’s just that way", but I say “NO!” That’s insulting. And, please remember you are under oath. Give the people more credit than that. CFO’s and business owners are smarter than that. America IS smarter than that. 

If they all only knew the truth. Tell them.

We don't need doctor’s being manipulated by a controller contouring with one hand, a marionette occupying the interior, driving decisions all hidden…tucked away from the patient.

We need doctor’s who have the freedom to think creatively, innovate internally, critically, independently, with the time, access & ability to connect with the ones they aim to serve. You see, no two people are the same. So, to you healthcare system please explain why you treat patients like they are carbon copies? Check. Check. Check. 

If we continue with this expensive assembly line prescription for healthcare, the results will continue to leave us all sick…physically, financially…and it just might be lethal.

Yet when it comes to healthcare this is exactly what happens. One doctor stands to see patient after patient, each one with different needs, requiring time, specific medical concerns with different goals and a long list of questions, but you tell them to do the same thing and the same way, rushing them through, marking boxes, more pre-authorizations, networks and piles of paperwork. Faster. See more patients. Less time to do it. It’s not right. It’s wrong.

This just might be one of the worst criminal offenses ever to be committed, and not to mention the way doctors are treated.

Objection!

Overruled. Relevant. I want to hear more.

It’s a crying shame. I mean doctors have one of the most significant and influential professions yet they are treated like machines and told to just keep going by hospital systems & insurance companies alike. It’s no wonder why so many patients are being shortchanged and ripped off. Let’s be honest, doctors can save lives, yet the system is killing them too. They should have the time & space to build a relationship with you in order to provide the best possible care AND they still deserve to have a life maintaining their own self-care. They have families too. You see, doctors are some of the heroes that often get blamed for the broken pieces that continue to fall apart burying us all together underneath. 

But they're not the problem. You know what? They are often broken too, and work in a system that ties their hands, leaving a few fingers free to click boxes created by policy makers and administrators who aren’t in the trenches with the patients they say they fight for. Dominated by lists, scores and fill in the blanks they think determines real value and improves health outcomes. 

But don’t take my word for it. Take Hippocrates advice and the expertise of frontline physicians who take an oath and make a commitment to “do no harm”. Real value is found spending time getting to know people well, cost transparency and in holding a patient's hand, not in rushed visits, expensive tests and avoidable referrals to high-margin specialists defined with codes that look more like alphabet soup.

Your honor, counsel, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if we continue down this road, the results could. be. lethal. For patients. For doctors. For our communities. Yours and mine.

Closing arguments are one that offers dramatic possibilities, and that’s what I’m here to do. It’s a patient advocates last opportunity to convince the jury of truth. And I’m taking it.

So, look at them. Now. Look at them.

I don’t have much faith in the healthcare system, but I do have hope in people and doctors who continue to fight for the care of patients and doctors on what essentially is a battlefield. If we live in a time where we can tailor food to our liking, design our homes, and customize our web pages, then it is our responsibility to do the same personalizing primary care and bringing change making an old, damaged system obsolete by improving the landscape and design of people’s care.

What’s happening now is meaningless - unless we bring the best out of each and every doctor and patient . That should be our goal.

No more meaningful use, or codes but instead meaningful care that brings real value and humanity to each patient being taken care of.

Yes, value is important. But, let’s have patients decide that. It sounds crazy, but do you know Direct Primary Care is successfully doing some pretty innovative things, cutting the red tape, allowing both physicians and patients a breath of fresh air where patients have more time with their doctor, little to no waiting, and doctor’s can still maintain their overhead and earn a good salary? Trading confusing, complex care for convenient. But here’s the catch: This kind of attentive, accessible, affordable primary care is really working. Right here. Right now.

Direct Primary Care is a growing solution and it’s succeeding all across the U.S. of A.

We need to get moving because while the percentage of primary care doctors is rapidly declining, they contribute 100% to our healthCARE’s foundation.

So let’s give them the freedom they require, because there’s no telling what we can achieve in a world when patients don’t need to use their insurance card to receive excellent primary care.

Instead, let them trade it to stand with a personal physician who is no longer tied down, and left only with the fading scars as a silent reminder that they never want to do go back, glad to continue to do what they love…take care of people well…“help and do no harm”. He does this while holding the doors wide open to the bright, graduating medical students so they know too, they can choose a sustainable, freedom filled future in primary care. 

Like I said, I'm DPC and I make no claims. Because of that...I now rest my case.

The Town Doctor is a sustainable direct primary care oasis who believes in educating healthcare consumers of their choices, and our belief is that proper care starts first when built on a relationship with a clinician who KNOWS YOU well. Our practice focuses’ on people, and intentionally putting health before medicine. At the top of our priorities is the stewardship of our bodies, our healthcare dollars and the overall health of our practice. 

One of our goals is to help educate a future generation of physicians, while providing top-class care to both our children and grandchildren. To support a healthy clinician-patient relationship, we provide many ways to connect so you too can feel like you have a ‘doctor in the family’. We wouldn’t want it any other way, and continue to refine the model to push family-friendly direct primary care practices to new levels of expertise. We invite you to join our mission to develop high performing, economically enhancing primary care. We work hard, play hard, and believe that what we are doing is worthwhile, life-giving, and important to growing healthy communities.