Last week on Here & Now, host Peter O’Dowd spoke to a primary care doctor about the new trend of membership care, a model that’s becoming more common across the country. Under this model, doctors ask patients to sign up for membership plans for direct primary care services.

The conversation sparked a debate online with members of the concierge medicine community. This is a follow-up conversation with Dr. Josh Umbehr, a direct care doctor at Atlas MD. He brings a different perspective on this model of care and tells O’Dowd why he believes this model is better for patients and how it avoids a doctor shortage.

After two years of lockdowns, panics, and gallons of hand sanitizer, we seem to be entering a post-COVID world. Governments are relaxing vaccine mandates and minimizing masks mandates, while markets are returning to normal. We’ve all learned more about the Greek alphabet then we did in high school. Bill Maher accurately assessed the pulse of the nation when he concluded, we’re “over COVID.”

At one time only available to the very rich, a model of what is now called “direct primary care” has been developed by Atlas MD in Wichita and is rapidly spreading across the country.

The administration hopes to make Medicare open to direct primary care. Under the arrangement, Medicare would pay a fixed monthly fee to a physician or physician group instead of the traditional fee-for-service payments. In return, the physicians would provide virtually all primary care. The fees would range from $90 to $120 a month, depending on the patient’s age and medical complexity.

Concierge doctors used to be available only to the rich. Today, “direct primary care” is far more affordable. Atlas MD in Wichita, for example, provides all primary care along with 24/7 phone and email access and generic drugs for less than what Medicaid pays. They help patients gain access to specialist care and diagnostic tests, with minimal waiting. The cost: $50 a month for a middle-aged adult and $10 a month for a child.

Dr. Umbehr and Dr. Segal discuss the potential of direct primary care, the origins of Dr. Umbehr’s interest in the space, and how direct primary care influences outcomes, insurance expenditures, and interactions with patients.

Health-care policy is often portrayed as a fight between government and insurance companies. But one of the most effective cost-saving measures is to cut out both and allow patients to deal directly with doctors.

Primary care physicians can curb healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes via telemedicine and new payment models and purchasing options, witnesses told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Tuesday.

In a direct primary care model — what Joshua Umbehr, MD, of Atlas MD in Wichita, Kansas, characterized as a more affordable cousin of “concierge care” — patients pay a monthly fee based on age.

Millions of Americans continue to struggle under the rising costs and bureaucratic mess spawned by the Affordable Care Act better known as Obamacare with no end in sight. Despite Congress’s inaction on solving the escalating crisis, doctors across the country are calling for a better system: Direct Primary Care.