Plum Health Blog
Affordable and Accessible Health Care in Detroit
Affordable and Accessible Health Care in Detroit
At Plum Health, our goal is to make health care affordable and accessible in Detroit and beyond. We have a membership model for health care and our patients about $55 each month to $75 each month. Children pay $15 per month with an enrolled adult. When you’re a member of Plum Health, you can call, text, or email your doctor any time. You can come in for a visit anytime without a co-pay. Visits to Plum Health are included as a part of the membership. We also save people money on their medications and lab work. We buy medications at wholesale prices from AndaMeds, and then we sell these medications to our patients with little to no markup. This makes the medications that we dispense out of our practice much less expensive - sometimes 50% to 90% less expensive - than medications at the retail pharmacy.
Another way that we make health care more affordable and accessible is via house calls. As a physician, I make house calls for my patients. If our patients are in Detroit, we charge $100 per house call. If they live outside of the city, we may charge more to cover gas prices and time spent driving to the home that may be further away.
Dr. Paul Thomas with Plum Health DPC makes a house call for one of his members at Plum Health. Dr. Paul drove out to their home on the West Side of the City to make the house call.
House Call Doctor in Detroit
I make house calls because I believe that healthcare should be affordable and accessible. 🥼
That accessibility piece can be out of reach for some elderly and disabled patients who cannot leave their home. This is especially true in Detroit, where nearly one third of Detroiters lack access to reliable transportation. 🚗
Studies on the effects of house calls on healthcare outcomes show fewer hospitalizations 🏥, fewer emergency room visits, decrease in re-admissions (going back to the hospital shortly after discharge), and these house 🏠 calls save patients money 💵.
That’s why it’s important for me to offer this vital service. This pic was taken last week in the Five Points neighborhood. I’m proud of this work and of how we’re able to lower the cost of care and make excellent health care available to more people.
The vast majority of our visits take place in our offices - we have two locations where we take care of people face to face and by using virtual visits. But, house calls can be used at any time to help our patients who are shut in, who have mobility issues, or who have concerns where they’d prefer not to leave their homes.
From the American Academy of Family Physicians:
House calls, also referred to as home visits, are increasing in the United States. Approximately 40% of patient visits in the 1930s were house calls. By 1996, this decreased to 0.5% because insurance reimbursements for house calls decreased. The pendulum in the United States is swinging again to house calls because of the need to develop care models for the growing aging population.
More information from the American Academy of Family Physicians on the benefits of house calls:
The Independence at Home program demonstrated a 23% reduction in hospitalizations, a 27% decrease in 30-day readmissions, and a cost savings of $111 per beneficiary per month, which is a $70 million savings over three years. Similarly, a large systematic review (N = 46,154; nine studies) evaluating home-based primary care outcomes for homebound older adults reported fewer hospitalizations, hospital bed days of care, emergency department visits, long-term care admissions, and long-term bed days of care.
If you’d like this type of care and service for yourself or your family, you can sign up here.
Dr. Paul Thomas makes a house call on the West Side of Detroit in the Five Points neighborhood. House calls can make health care more affordable and more accessible.