Open enrollment may be over, but you don’t have to wait until Q4 to start building your revenue stream. Maybe you’re thinking, “I’ll just wait a few months until I can start signing people up for healthcare again, right?” WRONG. Maybe you’ve experienced a letdown after signing up for a new group only to realize many employees decided to opt out of the plan. How can you fix that? Luckily, there’s a way you can increase your revenue without searching for new clients, and it starts with Direct Primary Care (DPC). DPC is a voluntary membership offering that solves systematic coverage gaps while significantly boosting revenue. DPC gives employees who lack day-to-day care healthcare access, helping with employee retention and cutting costs.

What is Direct Primary Care?

Direct Primary Care is a non-insurance, no-claims membership healthcare alternative that is slowly rising to become a fixture in healthcare. In fact, DPC memberships are seeing an average annual growth of 36%, reaching a total growth rate of 241% from 2017-2021.

How exactly does Direct Primary Care help increase revenue?

DPC gives you the option to explore new opportunities for your employer groups and those individuals who may have opted out from participating in an employer-sponsored health plan. Since it’s not insurance, DPC can be implemented at any time of the year.

Here’s how it works:

You’ll receive a “marketing fee” for each employee that you sign up for our DPC membership, and those marketing fees are paid every month a member is enrolled in our DPC offering. You’ll be able to offer this membership during the off cycle, so there’s no reason to keep putting pressure on yourself to sell, sell, sell during open enrollment. Our membership can be offered to employers with as little as two employees and up to thousands spread across the county. Our flexibility allows employers to offer our affordable membership as a voluntary or company-paid option. We are nationally scaled and our willingness to pay health advisors a marketing fee makes us an attractive option.

Here’s what DPC has to offer:

• Affordability: A no-claims membership coupled with aligned patient/physician incentives drive affordability—enabling employers to offer lower care costs, empower employee health, and deliver better patient experiences.
• Accessibility: Unlimited access to our proprietary private physician network (PPN), in-person chronic disease management, urgent care during business hours and 24/7 access to virtual care, provides peace of mind to our members.
• Transparency: Upfront fixed pricing gives transparency to empower patients to make smart, budgeted healthcare decisions—preventing post-visit surprise charges or opaque payment responsibilities.
• Mobility: A nationwide footprint for our members allows them to have access to medical care anywhere in the country. Our unique structure allows us to share medical records between our physicians in our PPN to better service members —eliminating care fragmentation and chances for misdiagnosis.

Why Healthcare2U?

Healthcare2U has a proven history of offering quality care to people who need it. For the past ELEVEN years, we’ve dedicated ourselves to perfecting our DPC membership so employers can offer a healthcare benefit that truly fits their workforce. Our hybrid membership is like no other, and we’re proud to offer something that no other DPC company can.

Here’s why we’re different…

• Our membership is available in all 50 states.
• We focus on chronic disease detection, prevention, and management. Six in ten adults in the US have a chronic illness, and it costs $4.1 trillion in annual healthcare costs.
• Our membership emphasizes the doctor-patient relationship, so members don’t just feel like another patient.
• We offer a Patient Advocacy Line (PAL) that’s staffed with bilingual, certified medical professionals who walk employees through their membership and schedule all care for members.

With Healthcare2U’s DPC membership, you’re not only helping increase your revenue during off-cycle, but you’re also helping employers offer an affordable, quality healthcare option to their employees. If you’re interested in learning more about how DPC works, fill out this form to contact us, and a representative will reach out to you soon!

The holidays are here, and something that’s on a lot of people’s minds is food and health. Does turkey actually make you sleepy? Does sugar make kids hyper? Are the holidays really the most stressful time of the year?

We sat down with Healthcare2U’s co-founder and Chief Medical Officer, Dr. John Rodriguez, to ask him if he thinks these holiday health “myths” are true or false.

Turkey makes you sleepy- FALSE

We’ve heard this theory numerous times, but it is, in fact, false. Tryptophan, the chemical in turkey that people are referring to that causes sleepiness, doesn’t make you sleepy on its own. What does make you sleepy, however, is when you eat foods that contain this chemical and a large number of carbohydrates. This includes carb-heavy foods like bread, desserts, potatoes, etc. So no, you won’t fall asleep if you eat turkey on its own, but if you add a whole Thanksgiving meal on top of it, you might need a nap!

Sugar makes kids extra hyper- FALSE

Research shows that while some people may believe children experience a “sugar rush” where they become hyperactive, studies show that is not the case. Doctors have surmised that the extra energy is due to emotions of excitement, not from extra sugar in their system. Having said that, it is still not advised to give children large amounts of sugar at once, as it isn’t healthy!

The holidays are the most stressful time of the year- TRUE

Unfortunately, this myth is very true. Most American adults – 74 percent – say that Christmas is stressful, and 55 percent say it is the most stressful holiday of the year. A large percentage of the stress is due to the extra money spent, preparing one’s home for guests, and spending time with family.

Here are some suggestions for people who find themselves stressed around the holidays:

• Make sure you’re planning ahead and keeping everything organized, as the holidays can easily become chaotic, and that adds to the stress.
• Keep track of holiday spending- overspending is a large part of holiday stress.
• Take time for yourself. Take some deep breaths and maybe do a hobby that you enjoy to take your mind off any stress you might be experiencing.
• Ask for help if you need it!
• Limit your drinking. While some people drink around the holidays to help relieve stress, it can make it worse.

Were you surprised by any of these myths? We hope you enjoyed us debunking some classic holiday health myths, and if you’re interested in learning more about how to manage holiday stress, check out our blog from the last holiday season or a WAFB-9 News interview Dr. Rodriguez was featured in.

Why are physicians making the decision to switch to a Direct Primary Care (DPC) model for their practice? In part three of our three-part blog series, Healthcare2U’s Dr. John Rodriguez shares why he moved to a DPC model and some hesitations he had before the switch. Don’t forget to check out our first blog in this series, which discusses the benefits of working with this type of model, and the second, which discusses “bad debt” for physicians and why some are moving over to the DPC model.

Q: What excited you about DPC enough to begin your practice?

A: Many years ago in San Antonio, Texas, I started a traditional fee-for-service clinic. I became a preferred provider on the main commercial insurance plans and began to see patients under those contracts. After filing claims, I noticed that the payments were rather low. I felt that for the time I spent with patients, I was not appropriately reimbursed, if I was at all. I also began to notice a great deal of bad debt. Many insurance companies were not paying the bill, and I had to spend a lot of time on the phone trying to find out why. Having those struggles as a practitioner, I began to deal with the true frustration of running a practice. I saw many of my local physician friends struggle and eventually close their practices. I knew that this could be in my future as well, but I was really set on trying to keep my clinic open and continuing to take care of patients at all costs.

Several years ago, the DPC model began to show up on my radar through the internet, web searches, etc. There were a few physicians here in San Antonio who were beginning to do it. Although their price points were much higher, I felt that I could do the same thing at a much lower monthly cost and take care of most of my patients without them breaking the bank and allowing me to keep my doors open. This new DPC practice was leading to very satisfied patients and was creating a lifestyle that I was happy with.

My practice was not driven by how many patients I could see in a day but by quality and cost-effectiveness because many of these patients either had no insurance or had high deductibles. Everything they had to pay for came out of their back pockets, so I had to be very mindful of the cost impact they would experience with prescription medications, testing, etc. That journey has led me to a place where I firmly believe the DPC model works. It’s made for every primary care physician, and if possible, they should adopt this model in some form or fashion in their practice.

Q: What are the hesitations physicians typically have when starting a DPC practice?

A: As you can imagine, the horror stories that many physicians and residents hear of having their own practice have dissuaded them from having a private practice clinic. Many become employed with hospitals or insurance companies, and most become very unhappy being just an employee. The thought of starting one’s own practice leads to hesitation because of a fear of the unknown; “how do I do it? What do I do? Whom do I talk to?” All that can frighten many away from DPC, but I believe if you do your due diligence- if you read about it and talk to other physicians who are doing it- you develop your own model, it can be done. Seek out good legal counsel to make sure that everything is appropriate with what you’re going to do. If you have the desire and the drive to make healthcare better and do what’s right for the system, you will be successful and, I believe, have a quality of life and a practice that most physicians would dream of.

Healthcare2U’s DPC program is changing healthcare

As mentioned in the first blog, DPC is growing in popularity because of its benefits to physicians and patients. In addition to those benefits, Healthcare2U’s DPC focuses on the benefits for employers, helping them contain their healthcare costs. Now offering even more benefits than before with our new Direct Primary Care advantage (DPCa) product, you’ll see why Dr. John and many others agree DPC is a growing trend that’s here to stay.

With DPCa, you’ll receive:

• $0 visit fee for annual physicals and labs
• $0 visit fee for unlimited in-person acute care
• $0 visit fee for unlimited in-person urgent care
• $0 visit fee for unlimited in-person chronic care
• $0 visit fee for 24/7 virtual care
• Concierge and patient advocacy through our Patient Advocacy Line (PAL)
• Nationwide footprint of physicians ready to provide quality care

DPCa advocates for preventative care to lower costs for employers and keep employees happy and healthy. With our PAL, employees are also guided through every step of their benefits and have a bilingual medical professional who will triage and book their appointments, so they’re never left to figure out their membership alone.

If you’re an employer or broker and would like to learn more about Healthcare2U’s DPC memberships, check out some of our other blogs or contact us.