H E A L T H
FRONTIER
DIRECT CARE A Monthly Subscription Plan to Care
RGVISION MAGAZINE
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MAY/JUN 2023
b y Ji l l i a n C a m e r on | p h ot os p r ov i d e d There’s a subscription for just about anything you can imagine these days. From streaming services to food delivery to gym memberships, the United States is a country that likes to subscribe. Subscriptions provide the benefit of access to goods or services for a low monthly fee. Why shouldn’t the healthcare system adopt that model? Frontier Direct Care is doing just that. “It’s Netflix for your doctor,” said Bibb Beale, CEO of Frontier Direct Care. “You pay a monthly subscription fee of around $60 to $70 a month per person and you get unlimited access to your primary care doctor. That's through phone calls, text messages, FaceTime, or in-person visits, you get unlimited access. You can visit as many or little times as you want for the same monthly fee,” Beale said. “Frontier Direct Care really started out as an idea from a doctor who's my co-founder. He used to work at just a regular primary care office, and I walked into the primary
care office and waited three hours (to see the doctor). I got so upset after waiting around two hours, 45 minutes. I told my assistant to create a $3,000 invoice and send it to them, to basically bill them for all of my waste of time,” Beale said. Dr. Peter Lazzopina, the doctor Beale was waiting to see, heard about the incident, and personally connected with Beale to address the issue. “He reached out and said, ‘Hey, I'm really sorry. Why don't you come in the back door of our practice and I'll see you in my office?’ I went in the back door and saw him, and he gave me his cell phone number and said, ‘You just call me, if you ever have any questions,’” said Beale. “After five or six times seeing him, he sent me to his office one day. I had been coming in through the back door the whole time (to see him directly), and he said, ‘Hey, what I've been doing (with) you is called direct primary care. And it's this model where you pay a
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