Will Coronavirus Change Primary Care Delivery?

The economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic has impacted many industries, perhaps most surprisingly that of the medical field. While many hospitals and doctors’ offices have been laying off staff and cancelling appointments, one medical model of care is thriving.

A small group of clinics has shifted away from the long-established system of paying doctors for every office visit, test, and procedure; instead they offer comprehensive medical service for a monthly fee. “This is the model that we’ve all been trying to get to,” says Tom Banning, the head of the Texas Academy of Family Physicians.

Instead of being forced to see as many patients per day as possible, this model allows physicians the flexibility to think more broadly about what services would deliver the best results for patients. In addition to the monthly payment, these clinics create financial incentives for physicians who improve patients’ health; doctors often get bonuses if their patients stay healthier and may be financially penalized if patients get sicker.

One clinic system that has adopted this approach is Florida-based ChenMed. When the pandemic forced offices to close, ChenMed adapted rapidly, switching 95% of office visits to virtual tele-health visits, allowing them to increase contact with patients. Another clinic using this model of care, Massachusetts-based Iora Health, has seen the total number of contacts with patients increase more than 50% since the pandemic began. Many of these clinics have started delivering food and toilet paper to patients’ homes in an effort to protect older and vulnerable patients. Clinics using this method have reported that few of their patients are ending up in the hospital.

The challenges of converting to this new model of primary care are many, but many experts hope that it may reshape medicine in a post-pandemic world. Dr. Christopher Chen, chief executive of ChenMed says, “Somebody needs to wake up and say we can’t keep doing the same thing.”