I gave it a try last fall, and the difference is night and day: my current Dr actually works for me, whereas the last one very obviously worked for my insurance company.
Rereading your post, this is exactly what you want. He had me do a whole bunch of tests right off the bat and set about optimizing different things. His job is to keep my body working well, and he takes it seriously. In-network docs are, in my experience, mainly about hitting arbitrary metrics imposed by insurance companies.