Daily Detroit Podcast hits 1,000 Episodes

Daily Detroit Podcast hits 1,000 Episodes

This week, the Daily Detroit Podcast hits 1,000 episodes! That’s a lot of content! The team of Jer Staes, Randy Walker, and Shianne Nocerini are diligent and talented, and they put together insightful, informative, and entertaining shows each week day.

Over the years, I’ve been a guest a handful of times to discuss medical care issues, mostly relating to coronavirus and the COVID 19 pandemic.

• Episode from April 5th 2021 on the big coronavirus spike in the spring

• Episode from April 15th 2018 about our Plum Health DPC practice

I’m happy to contribute and very proud of what this podcast has accomplished!

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Coronavirus Update for Detroit on April 5th, 2021

The house is on fire.

Michigan reported 8,413 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, bringing the state's total pandemic case count to 692,206.

There were 8,413 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday - we’re getting close to that big spike that we had around the holidays in November and December of 2020, and that’s not good news.

16,218 Michigan residents have died over the last 13 months from the Coronavirus.

Just because you're "over it" doesn't mean that Coronavirus will magically disappear.

We're all tired - we all want this to be over with.

But now is not the time for recklessness.

Be safe, be smart, mask up, keep your distance, and get the vaccine as soon as you can.

On the bright side, 31% of Michigan residents have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, and 19% are fully vaccinated.

I was on Daily Detroit with Jer Staes talking about Coronavirus and why cases are skyrocketing here in Metro Detroit.

Listen here: http://www.dailydetroit.com/2021/03/30/the-house-is-on-fire-with-coronavirus-in-metro-detroit/

Or listen here:

Thanks for reading and have a great week. - Dr. Paul Thomas with Plum Health DPC

Help Protect Other People From Coronavirus, Wear A Mask

How can you help protect yourself and other people from coronavirus? Wear a Mask

This week, Daily Detroit asked me a ton of questions about the Coronavirus and how to protect yourself, your family, and your community from the spreading virus. It boils down to wearing a mask. I answer many other questions during the podcast, listen here:

Why Should I wear a Mask?

You should wear a mask to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Here’s why:

1. Coronavirus has a long incubation period. People can have the virus without knowing it or having symptoms for about 4 to 5 days on average. This 4 - 5 day period of having the virus without showing symptoms is known as the incubation period. Some people can be in this incubation period for up to 14 days! Therefore, you could be walking around, infected with coronavirus and unknowingly spreading the virus to your friends, family, coworkers, and vulnerable people in your community. This is the main reason why you should wear a mask.

2. Coronavirus does not always cause symptoms. For COVID-19, data to date suggest that 80% of infections are mild or asymptomatic, 15% are severe infection, requiring oxygen and 5% are critical infections, requiring ventilation. So, in most cases, if you get the Coronavirus, you’ll be asymptomatic. If you’re asymptomatic, you can still spread the virus, so it’s important to wear a mask to prevent spreading the virus to your close contacts.

3. Wearing a mask prevents you from spreading the virus via respiratory droplets. When you talk, cough, sneeze, sing, yell, or breathe, you give off tiny respiratory droplets. These droplets carry the coronavirus and can land on surfaces or land in the noses or mouths or eyes of your close contacts. Wearing a mask puts a physical barrier between your nose and mouth and those around you, and therefore decreases the spread of droplets and the spread of coronavirus. If you want to explore this further, check out this blog post from Indian Express. Briefly, if you wear a mask it reduces the amount of bacterial and viral particles that you expel from your mouth when talking, as demonstrated in this image.

This PhD Scientist demonstrates bacterial growth related to wearing a mask vs not wearing a mask.

Why are bars being told to shut down?

Many bars in Michigan are closed or being ordered to close after outbreaks of coronavirus. There are four big reasons why bars are the best places to get coronavirus:

1. People drink at bars, and it’s difficult to wear a mask while drinking. Without a mask, it’s easier to spread Covid 19.

2. There tends to be loud music at bars, so people tend to raise their voices and speak more forcefully. This forceful speech tends to spread more respiratory droplets, which leads to an easier spread of coronavirus.

3. People tend to get closer to one another at bars - the less physical distance between people, the easier it is to spread Covid 19.

4. Bars are enclosed, intimate spaces, usually with poor ventilation. Many bars are windowless with low ceilings and poor ventilation systems. This can serve as a great space for a virus to circulate.

This is why bars like Harper’s in East Lansing have seen outbreaks of Coronavirus.

Here’s what Daily Detroit had to say:

Welcome to the holiday weekend, everybody. This is certainly a strange one, with coronavirus numbers once again on the upswing in Michigan and across much of the country, adding a complicated wrinkle to what is normally one of the busiest travel weekends of the year.

On today’s show, we make a house call to our friend Dr. Paul Thomas, founder of Plum Health Direct Primary Care in Detroit, for help answering your burning questions about COVID-19. We talk face masks, whether it’s safe to eat at restaurants or fly on airplanes, what to make of coronavirus liability waivers and more. And we’ll remind you that if you’ve got health-related questions about coronavirus, send ’em to us at dailydetroit@gmail.com and we’ll do our best to include them in future episodes with Dr. Paul. You can even send us audio of your question and we’ll try to work that audio into the show.

Also, we talk the latest, dispiriting COVID-19 data from the state and how we’re holding up from a mental health perspective more than three months into this weird, horrible quarantine that unfortunately shows little sign of ending anytime soon.

Thanks for reading, and stay safe out there!

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Plum Health DPC

On our newest pod, Dr. Paul Thomas @PlumHealthDPC takes listener questions about the Coronavirus. Plus, we do a check-in how folks are doing - by the way, how are you doing out there with everything going on? https://t.co/6n6TIz2zzK

— Daily Detroit (@TheDailyDetroit) July 3, 2020

Daily Detroit Covers the Plum Health Move to Corktown

Daily Detroit, shares what to know and where to go in Southeast Michigan in a 15-20 minute, local podcast. They recently covered our move from Southwest Detroit to our new location in Corktown Detroit. Here’s what we discuss:

• The move into our new 1,700 Square Foot office in Corktown, at the Corner, which is the historic former site of Tiger Stadium. This is the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, and our address is 1600 Michigan Ave, Suite 125, Detroit MI 48216

• We’re a Direct Primary Care practice in Detroit, and we provide Family Medicine services through a membership model for health care. Our members pay $10 each month for children, and our adult memberships start at $49 per month. With the membership, our patients can see us anytime they need to without a copay.

• Dr. Raquel Orlich started with our practice in July 2019. She’s an Osteopathic Physician who studied at Michigan State University and was the Chief Resident in Family Medicine at Ascension Macomb.

• Why did we move? We moved because we outgrew our original space in Southwest Detroit. We had also won some grant money through the Motor City Match program and the Detroit Demo Day that we needed to use towards our build out of a new office.

• Why this specific location? We moved to the Corner because it’s very close to our original location. Our new spot in Corktown is only 1.1 miles away from our old spot in Southwest Detroit. Importantly, this allows us to continue serving all of our original members.

• What have we learned since starting this business? If you’ve ever started a business, you know that it’s not the decisions, it’s the decisiveness. This was something that was difficult to learn as a Physician because Doctors are trained to over-analyze problems and leave no stone unturned. I still use that part of my brain when taking care of patients, but I have to turn that part of my brain off when I think about challenges in our business.

• How can people get involved? You can enroll on our website, here. Or you can give us a call at 313.444.5630. Finally, you can stop by at our new office - 1620 Michigan Ave Ste 125, Detroit MI 48216.

Listen to the episode on Daily Detroit’s YouTube Channel (below). Our segment starts at the 4:28 mark.

If you like Plum Health, and if you like YouTube, you’ll love our Plum Health YouTube Channel!

Thanks for reading and watching and have a marvelous day - Dr. Paul Thomas and Dr. Raquel Orlich

Plum Health Interviewed by Daily Detroit

This week, we were interviewed by Daily Detroit about our Demo Day Win! Here's the "News Byte"

In the above interview, Jeremiah mentions a previous interview, and that interview can be heard here:

If you're unfamiliar with our service, my name is Dr. Paul Thomas and I'm a Family Medicine Doctor in Detroit. Our office is in Southwest Detroit and we take care of people of all ages and stages - our youngest patient is 6 months old and our oldest is now 92 years young. 

We offer the same services as any other primary care office, but we use a membership model - that means that our members pay $10/month for children and starting at $49/month for adults to use our service. This allows us to have more one-on-one time with our patients and deliver a higher level of service in our office. 

One way that we go above and beyond is that every patient has my cell phone number - meaning that they can call or text me anytime they need me. We guarantee same-day or next-day appointments, and the majority of our in-office procedures are free of charge, like abscess drainage, toenail removal, ear lavage, etc...

If you're ready to start your journey to better health with Plum Health, then head over to our enrollment link, here. 

Thanks for reading and listening!

- Dr. Paul Thomas with Plum Health DPC

Plum Health on Daily Detroit

This week, we were featured on the Daily Detroit Podcast. It was great meeting up with Sven Gustafson and Jeremiah Staes, the journalists behind the publication, and hosting them in our office in Southwest Detroit. 

You can listen to the full episode here:

Here's what Sven Gustafson wrote about our practice, in the context of the interview:

Dealing with health insurance is few people’s idea of a good time — if you can afford it at all, that is.

Now, a doctor operating out of an office in a former Detroit Police Department precinct headquarters? That’s flipping the script on the traditional model of health care.

On this episode of the Daily Detroit Happy Hour podcast, we schedule an appointment with Dr. Paul Thomas of Plum Health in Southwest Detroit. He’s practicing a model known as direct primary care in which patients pay a membership rate, starting at $10 a month for children and climbing to $89 a month for seniors, directly to the doctor. In exchange, patients get more personalized care, better access and lower-cost medications, imaging and laboratory services.

Dr. Thomas, who graduated from the Wayne State University School of Medicine, estimates he can cover 80 to 90 percent of most people’s health care needs. So he acknowledges it’s not a complete solution to our country’s problem-plagued health care system.

We talk to Dr. Thomas about how direct primary care works, how it differs from traditional insurance-directed health care and how it affects both patients and his life as a working physician. He also tells us about the various ways he’s using digital technology to facilitate his job and market his business.

Find us and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. Previous episodes are here.

Daily Detroit's tagline is "what to know and where to go in Detroit" - it's worth knowing more about Detroit, if you're a resident, a Metro Detroiter, or from another part of the world. Sven and Jeremiah cover interesting stories and give great insights, so their podcast is worth a listen/subscription. 

Thanks for reading and listening, and have a wonderful day,

- Dr. Paul Thomas with Plum Health DPC