Delivering Excellent Customer Service in Primary Care

Recently, we were featured on Hunter Schultz’s podcast, Winning Healthcare Food Fights and we were able to talk about direct primary care and how we’re actively lowering the cost of healthcare while improving the customer experience in health care. You can listen to the podcast on a variety of platforms, from YouTube, to Apple Podcasts, to Anchor, and others. Here’s what Hunter Schultz had to say about the show:

American healthcare isn't known for great customer service. More like inconvenience. Dr. Paul Thomas thought differently and started Plum Health DPC in Detroit, MI. He learned a secret from other physicians. Changing the business model so his practice could focus on customer service and care. Along the way, he wrote one book and now helps other physicians looking for a better way to provide great patient care.

Dr. Thomas went the never crowded extra mile too. He opened Plum Health DPC in the Corktown area of Detroit, instead of Grosse Pointe. Every day, he and his team provide proof old-fashioned American ingenuity is alive and well. They are putting the Wow back into care by giving great customer service.

Visit Plum Health DPC, here.

His book, Direct Primary Care: The Cure for Our Broken Healthcare System, is available here.

For more resources and other information, please visit our website.

Paul Thomas, MD at the Plum Health DPC office in Corktown Detroit. The office is located at 1620 Michigan Ave, Suite 125, Detroit, MI 48216.

Many thanks to Hunter for putting together this interview, even more thanks to him for being an Alpha Reader for our first book, Direct Primary Care: The Cure for Our Broken Healthcare System. Here’s some of the topics we covered during the interview:

Exciting or positive things in the US Healthcare System, like the growing direct primary care movement and some free market elements in our current system that can help protect patients from overcharges in the current marketplace.
The types of tests or new tools for assessing health and wellness - things like 23andMe, Aperiomics, OneOme, Butterfly Ultrasound probe, texting, emails and more consistent communication with patients.
Integrating patients’ health goals into their care plan
Dr. Paul Thomas’ path to becoming a doctor - volunteering at Cass Clinic and working with compassionate doctors and medical students at Wayne State taking care of uninsured and underinsured patients in Detroit’s Cass Corridor
The simplicity of the Direct Primary Care model and aligning the incentives - when patients pay the monthly membership fee for a DPC practice, they are incentivized to use the system and to use the DPC service. Likewise, doctors are incentivized to take care of patients promptly and ensure optimal health and wellness. Doctors in the DPC model are also incentivized to not over-test and over-treat their patients. Rather, we focus on counseling our patients through their healthy behaviors to optimize wellness.
Price points at our model, seen here. Our price points are less than a cell phone bill for an individual and less than a cable bill for a family. We are cognizant of the median income in Detroit, our community, and that is $26,000 annually. We intentionally made our service affordable for anyone with an income in our community, and we deliver excellent primary care services to the folks that enroll in our clinic.
We discuss our recent Ribbon Cutting ceremony with Mayor Duggan and our recent move to 1620 Michigan Ave, Suite 125, Detroit MI 48216, which is 1.1 miles from our old office. We have a more conveniently location in Corktown, Detroit.
We recently hired a medical assistant, Chris, and we recently brought on a new doctor, Dr. Raquel Orlich who is quickly filling her practice with new patients. We typically have 25 to 30 new patients enroll in our practice each month.
We discuss having enough time to work with our patients. We typically have 30 minutes to 1 hour to spend with each of our patients. In the typical system, your doctor has 2,400 patients and they only get 10 to 15 minutes to take care of each patient. Having fewer patients allows us to have more time with our patients and to build trusting relationships with our patients.
We discuss the importance of having continuity of care, or a long-term relationship, with a primary care doctor. In our practice, we really focus on building the doctor-patient relationship and continuity of care.
Demonstrating how valuable it is to have a primary care doctor that knows you well.
Delivering an excellent customer experience in primary care at our Plum Health DPC office. This is achieved by meeting people at the door, having enough time for the appointment, addressing their concerns fully, giving the medications from our office and not sending them to a pharmacy, having the ability to draw blood in our office, and the ability to text and email our patients. Because we’re able to do these things well, our patients often have a “wow” experience. This becomes evident over time as more and more folks review our practice and our service (see Google reviews below).

Here’s more information about Winning Healthcare Food Fights in general:

Winning Healthcare Food Fights is a weekly online radio show covering important healthcare issues. Hear from physicians about getting better care, experts explaining how we arrived at our current mess, and how we clean it up!

Healthcare's solutions cannot possibly be described in 2 minute soundbites. It takes some time to sort through the mess to discover the attributes of great care and how we move forward.

The rewards are more confidence about the direction we must head, and what to do about it. Less fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Thanks so much for reading and watching, and have a wonderful day - Dr. Paul Thomas with Plum Health DPC

Plum Health Blog

Delivering Excellent Customer Service in Primary Care

Delivering Excellent Customer Service in Primary Care