Elizabeth Erwin
News Editor
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Primary Care Medical Center is being featured as a best practice by Anthem because of its number of potentially avoidable emergency room visits.
According to the Center for Disease Control’s website, there were nearly 137 million emergency room visits in the United States in 2015.
The health insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, estimates it costs between $130 and $180 for a doctor visit while the projected cost of an emergency room visit is $580-$700.
According to a press release from PCMC, the practice is seeing more patients come to their facility instead of the emergency room.
“This results in much lower costs for the patients of PCMC compared to the area and to the entire state of Kentucky.”
PCMC administrators attribute this statistic to the extended hours and seven days a week care. In addition to extended hours and other health care savings, PCMC is currently working with a Chicago-based company that uses data analytics and care managers to “further track and lower costs.”
“We will continue to add more cutting edge services to better serve our patients and the entire health care delivery system,” managing partner of PCMC and the Chief Medical Officer for Village MD-Kentucky, Robert Hughes, said.
PCMC administrators are sharing their expertise with practices all around the country, including this week in San Francisco, California.
“This week we will be meeting with the Board of the California Medical Association… to try and help them develop a program to help their independent doctor members stay independent of hospital system,” according to the press release.
Hughes said studies consistently show that these practices lower the costs patients have to pay because they are not tied to a large employer such as a hospital.
Hughes and VillageMD co-founder, Clive Fields, recently met with the genetic testing company, 23andMe, in Silicon Valley.
“The goal here is to incorporate the individual person’s genetics in helping to determine more effective, customized treatment for that individual that has a higher probability of being successful.”
