Our Lady of Hope Clinic is a direct primary care (DPC) clinic located in Madison, Wisconsin. DPC is a subscription-based model of delivering primary care, where members (patients) pay a monthly fee and in turn receive coverage of comprehensive primary care services including provider appointments, basic labs, and some additional tests as well. One of the commonly cited benefits to DPC is its increased access to the provider, typically through ability to schedule same-day appointments, longer appointment times, and communicate directly with the provider via text/call. 

Our Second Opinions team was tasked with helping our client explain the structure and benefits of the direct primary care model to individuals who may be interested in receiving care in this method, including how this model compares with that of traditional insurance coverage. Our team performed insurance benchmarking to help potential patients directly compare out-of-pocket costs, and we created a patient-friendly educational pamphlet articulating these comparisons. Precisely comparing DPC with traditional healthcare insurance proved to be challenging, which led us to submit our reflections on this task to a peer-reviewed journal, currently pending approval. 

Our client was particularly unique in that it additionally functions as a free clinic to provide charity care for uninsured/underinsured patients, funded primarily through donations. Thus, the other component of our project entailed analyzing the costs and benefits (in healthcare dollar savings) of our client’s charity care efforts. We summarized our findings in a slide deck for our client to communicate the positive impact of its charity care work to its donors.