The new Premonition Health is the result of internal medicine physician Matthew Bezzant’s desire to see health care work a new way.
“I think that primary care is fairly broken,” he said. “It’s pretty rough out there.”
Bezzant said he wants health care to be functional for both patients and providers.
“My current practice is a test bed.”
He said he’s experimenting with two direct-care models — one with insurance and one without.
Bezzant said there are a number of direct-care practices in town that are based on cash, not insurance. They’re also known as concierge clinics.
Premonition has a hybrid model that charges patients with insurance $50 a month or patients without insurance $65 a month instead of using a traditional fee-for-service system.
This helps the clinic offset the uncertainty of when it gets paid.
“We have a consistent monthly income,” Bezzant said.
He said that uncertainty is a major issue for physicians.
They may bill for a certain procedure, and insurance then pays them back 60% to 70% of what they’ve billed about two or three months later, “which makes it very, very hard to stay in business.”