Plum Health Blog
Plum Health serves a Health Professional Shortage Area
Plum Health serves a Health Professional Shortage Area, and we’re proud to do this. Part of our mission is to deliver affordable, accessible health care services in Detroit and beyond. This is important because we are passionate about making health care available to communities that have been traditionally neglected by the existing medical system.
Unfortunately, doctors and hospital systems choose to locate their practices in neighborhoods and communities that have higher income levels and higher rates of private insurance coverage. You see, doctors in the current fee-for-service system only receive what they are paid by third party payers, like Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance companies.
And some of these payers pay more for services than others. For example, Medicaid reimbursement is much lower than Medicare reimbursement or Private Insurance reimbursement. This really hurts Detroit as a greater proportion of Detroiters rely on Medicaid for health insurance relatives to other counties in our region.
Therefore, the current fee-for-service system incentivizes doctors to locate their practices in higher-income communities, and thus leaves lower-income communities medically underserved. As an example, the ratio of primary care physicians to general population in Detroit is roughly 1 primary care physician for every 6,300 residents. In Oakland county, there’s about 1 primary care physician for every 683 residents.
Below are the medically underserved areas in Detroit as of 2017. We are proud to be practicing in the Southwest Detroit/Corktown neighborhoods and serving our neighbors, community members, and small businesses with high-quality medical services.
Thank you for reading and understanding this important issue,
-Dr. Paul Thomas, MD with Plum Health DPC in Detroit, Michigan
More on the above map: Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), a Federal Agency, develops shortage designation criteria to determine whether a geographic area, population group or facility is a Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) or a Medically Underserved Area/Population (MUA/P). HPSAs may be designated as having a shortage of primary medical care, dental or mental health providers. They may be urban or rural areas, population groups, or medical or other public facilities. MUAs may be a whole county or a group of contiguous counties, a group of counties or civil divisions, or a group of urban census tracts in which residents have a shortage of health services. MUPs may include groups of persons who face economic, cultural or linguistic barriers to health care.
Additional information on Medicaid rates in Wayne county, take from MLive:
Plum Health on Bonfires of Social Enterprise
Last month, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Romy Kochan on her podcast, Bonfires of Social Enterprise. Bonfires of Social Enterprise is focused on highlighting social entrepreneurs and we were happy to be featured on this podcast!
I believe that Plum Health DPC is a social enterprise because we not only focus on growing the business in a traditional sense (revenue, profit & loss, etc...), but we also focus on making a positive impact in the community by providing a medical service that is much needed the SW Detroit community.
Romy was a great interviewer and made me think differently about my own practice, prompting me to say something I've never said before. She asked if I could dream big, and envision a future for what I'm doing, what could this look like?
I responded by saying, "I think this could look like a nation where we get rid of these old notions of what 'good health care' looks like, and starting to realize that it doesn't look like a piece of plastic in our wallet. It looks like a relationship with someone in our community that is a healer, that can listen, and has time to address your concerns".
The conversation had a broad scope from how we got started, to the impact we're having, to the reaction to our service from the community. Here's how Romy describes it:
We’re back with another episode here on social enterprise. We have a doctor on this show who has been making a big impact in Detroit. It is Dr. Paul Thomas of Plum Health Care DPC. He has a dream of changing the notion of health care from a plastic card in your wallet to true healing from a healing doctor! What a concept!
This was a wonderful interview and I am so grateful to Romy Kochan for having me on her podcast. Check out the full episode here, and have a healthy week!
- Dr. Paul with Plum Health DPC
PS: you can find this episode on the podcasting platform of your choice:
PRX.org (Public Radio Exchange)
PPS: Follow us on Instagram!
