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Comment by Arborealist | Hacker News Reader

Is this the same thing as concierge medicine? I’m interested but it seems quite expensive. 80$ a month seems much lower than normal.

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I don't know how to get around this problem but wife and I paid $1,500 for a year's worth of concierge care only to have the physician close up shop after 4 months. I suppose if we paid month-by-month that would have helped.

I honestly don’t know if ‘concierge medicine’ is a different thing, but from what it sounds like and my own experience with direct primary care they sound equivalent. Possibly different by cost or target demographic.

A rose by any other name, and all that.

We have DPC, and it's amazing. We pay $250/month for a family of 4. Some places charge less, but then also charge you for each time you see the doctor. Ours is all inclusive except for any in office incidentals - like lab work.

It's truly amazing. Our doctor knows us all well, can get responses to email or text within just a few minutes, generally same day appointments, or next day if she's really busy. Most things we don't even need to go in for - I did a recent international trip, and she just ordered me all of the needed travel medications without having to stop in.

Thanks. I might try this out for a year. Can’t be worse than my current experience of only seeing a NP for 5 minutes.

I think you’ll be very pleasantly surprised.

Consider talking to a couple local dpc providers and see which you feel you’d work best with.

At this point, I just reschedule if it looks like im seeing an NP or PA-C and the time is only going to be 10 minutes or less.

DPC is just concierge-lite; the difference basically comes down to the head count that the provider wants for their practice.

A lot of docs do DPC for a while to build up a client base, then exit to concierge, keeping a third of their previous roster at three times the cost.

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