Dr. Debbie Daniel was attending an American Academy of Family Physicians conference three years ago when she saw her future.
“I wandered into a talk about direct primary care,” she says. “It was doctors talking about practicing high-quality, customer-driven medicine with no insurance. The light went on. I thought it was the holy grail.”
Daniel, a Chattanooga native who’d been practicing medicine in nearby Dunlap for 25 years, came home from that conference and opened Riverfront Medicine Direct Primary Care. She splits her time between that office and her Dunlap practice, but plans to shift her focus soon to her practice in Chattanooga.
“I love medicine and I love taking care of people,” she says. “Direct primary care is the way to do that and love it.”
The direct primary care model is an alternative to more traditional fee-for-service insurance coverage. A direct primary care physician typically charges a monthly, quarterly or annual fee that covers clinical and lab services and consultations, among other primary care services.