Membership-Based Doctor’s Office Opens in Centerville

Dr. Charles Opperman, a UD grad and formerly with Kettering Health Network, has opened Simplicity Health Direct Primary Care in south Centerville. The practice is a direct primary care model, a growing trend among physician practices nationwide, and Simplicity Health Direct Primary Care will be one of the first of its kind in the area.

Simplicity Health Direct Primary Care seeks to change the status quo when it comes to visiting the doctor. They aim to do this through four unique pillars not typically synonymous with healthcare: time with the doctor, direct access to the doctor, superior personalized and attentive quality of care, and healthcare cost savings. Deviating from the standard billing of insurance for doctor’s visits, Simplicity Health Direct Primary Care utilizes a membership-based model. The affordable monthly membership allows for extended 30 or 60-minute office visits and access directly to the physician’s personal cell phone. By limiting their patient empanelment to 10% of that of a typical physician’s office, Simplicity Health Direct Primary care is able to offer highly personalized care and often with substantial healthcare cost savings to the patient.

Simplicity Health Direct Primary Care will not charge the patient’s insurance company for their services. By doing so, this allows the practice to negotiate more reasonable healthcare costs outside of the insurance company often at steep discounts hovering around 90-95% off the typical retail cost. Simplicity Health will also be drawing their own labs in-office, will offer many discounted prescription medications through their own in-house pharmacy, and will also be offering house calls.

Dr. Charles Opperman, founder and sole provider at Simplicity Health Direct Primary Care, stated, “People are fed up with the 5-minute doctor visit. You wouldn’t be satisfied with a 5-minute haircut yet we often settle for 5-minutes on something as important as our health. It’s not the doctor’s fault, it’s the system’s fault. The system is set up to force the doctor to see 30 or 40 patients in a day. Furthermore, the doctor is in a constant bureaucratic battle with the health insurance companies to play by ‘their rules’ which are more about saving the insurance company money than about care for the actual patients. We are changing the status quo and taking healthcare back to where it belongs: between doctor and patient. Simple.”

Simplicity Health Direct Primary Care is a membership-based doctor’s office that seeks to improve the traditional patient experience at the doctor. Simplicity Health Direct Primary Care is not a replacement for insurance and they still accept patients with all types of insurance, but simply do not bill their insurance. They also proudly accept those without health insurance. They seek to cut out the middlemen in the bureaucratic healthcare system, lower healthcare costs, and return healthcare back to patient and doctor. It’s healthcare reimagined.

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