PETOSKEY — A new approach to health care has made its way to Petoskey from Traverse City with the second location of Table Health at 3890 Charlevoix Ave.
Table Health is a membership-based health care program. Members pay a monthly fee and receive access to all physician services offered. Since staff don’t have to spend so much of their time on insurance, patients receive more care and attention from their physician, according to Table Health President Jill Butryn.
There are no copays or deductibles and some medications are included in the membership, like high blood pressure medication and antibiotics. Patients do have to pay for their own lab work, but Butryn said they only pay the wholesale cost so the expense is still lower than it would be elsewhere.
The first Table Health location opened in Traverse City in 2018 as a wellness-focused clinic offering functional medicine — which is a patient-centered approach to treatment, as opposed to disease-centered, according to the Table Health website.
Eventually, Table Health added direct primary care (DPC) to its services due to demand from patients.
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According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, direct primary care is when patients pay a medical provider directly for primary care services. By cutting out the third-party insurance providers, patients can receive improved access to their doctor, extended visits and more personalized care.
“We’ve never taken insurance for any of our services. That’s probably inspired by a lot of things, but most importantly, the feeling that for physicians to bill insurance, it’s becoming increasingly complex and becoming a distraction from the relationship with the patient,” Butryn said.
“The complexity and the rules don’t feel congruent with an authentic patient-doctor relationship sometimes. “
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Members pay a $150 fee when signing up and then a monthly fee per family member, which is determined by age range and can be anywhere between $30 for children and $92 for anyone over the age of 65. Monthly fees do not increase due to pre-existing conditions.
Table Health includes a breakdown of services included in the monthly fee on its website and is committing to price transparency with its patients, Butryn said.
In addition to individuals and families, Table Health works with businesses to provide direct primary care for employees.
“It’s really nice for employees because the employer covers the cost of membership as part of their health plan. And so then that whole family can be members and it’s just a very nice benefit. And it’s good for employers as well, because the direct primary care model has been shown to decrease overall health care costs for large employers,” Butryn said.
Table Health membership does not cover specialist care, vision or dental, so members are encouraged to have some form of insurance to cover those other needs. Table Health Petoskey will focus on direct primary care and not offer functional medicine.
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Vince WinklerPrins is a family physician who was hired as the doctor for Table Health Petoskey. WinklerPrins is originally from Michigan and has worked in multiple states during his career, as well as Brazil and the Netherlands.
“I was looking for a way back to Michigan and a way to practice in a direct primary care model. I am a family doctor with many years of experience and I was fed up with the constraints that the insurance based model put on my ability to take good care of my patients and on my patient’s ability to have easier access, more time with their doctor, and cost accountability in their primary care,” WinklerPrins said in an email.
“DPC is the best way forward. It is not a new model and it has evolved in the U.S. over the last two decades. I love that I am free and independent of the traditional payment system and as a consequence I have more time to get to know each patient, I can broaden the scope of the services I can provide, and I get to save people money.”
A typical session with WinklerPrins is 30 to 60 minutes long, depending on the reason for the visit. He began accepting new patients in January.
“I feel so happy that he’s on our team in Petoskey. I always try to fit the physician to the community that they’re going to work with and Dr. WinklerPrins in Petoskey fits the community really well. He’s very invested in his practice and he’s very excited to see families. I think he’ll be a great mentor and a great positive force in the community of Petoskey,” Butryn said.
For the next year, Table Health will focus on getting the Petoskey location established before continuing to open new offices around northwest Michigan over the next few years.
“Our mission is to redefine health care and that’s what direct primary care does. We’ve come to use health care and insurance synonymously and they’re not the same. Insurance is insurance and health care is health care. And we believe that health care should be transparent, it should authentically honor the patient-doctor relationship and it should be high value,” Butryn said.
“Initially, insurance started out as a way to cover hospital bills a long, long time ago. But we’ve kind of evolved into covering more and more and more, insurance companies have gotten more and more and more involved in every interaction. And so that can get very confusing to people. Our motto is very straightforward — it’s high value, it’s transparent and it honors the patient-doctor relationship that we’ve lost.”
— Contact reporter Tess Ware at tware@petoskeynews.com. Follow her on Twitter, @Tess_Petoskey.
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