How doctors can help low-income patients (and still make a profit) | P.J. Parmar

Translator: Ivana Korom Reviewer: Krystian Aparta

Colfax Avenue, here in Denver, Colorado,

was once called the longest, wickedest street in America.

My office is there in the same place -- it's a medical desert.

There are government clinics and hospitals nearby,

but they're not enough to handle the poor who live in the area.

By poor, I mean those who are on Medicaid.

Not just for the homeless; 20 percent of this country is on Medicaid.

If your neighbors have a family of four and make less than $33,000 a year,

then they can get Medicaid.

But they can't find a doctor to see them.

A study by Merritt Hawkins

found that only 20 percent of the family doctors in Denver

take any Medicaid patients.

And of those 20 percent, some have caps, like five Medicaid patients a month.

Others make Medicaid patients wait months to be seen,

but will see you today, if you have Blue Cross.

This form of classist discrimination is legal

and is not just a problem in Denver.

Almost half the family doctors in the country

refuse to see Medicaid patients.

Why?

Well, because Medicaid pays less than private insurance

and because Medicaid patients are seen as more challenging.

Some show up late for appointments, some don't speak English

and some have trouble following instructions.

I thought about this while in medical school.

If I could design a practice that caters to low-income folks

instead of avoiding them,

then I would have guaranteed customers and very little competition.

(Laughter)

So after residency, I opened up shop, doing underserved medicine.

Not as a nonprofit, but as a private practice.

A small business seeing only resettled refugees.

That was six years ago,

and since then, we've served 50,000 refugee medical visits.

(Applause)

Ninety percent of our patients have Medicaid,

and most of the rest, we see for free.

Most doctors say you can't make money on Medicaid,

but we're doing it just fine.

How?

Well, if this were real capitalism, then I wouldn't tell you,

because you'd become my competition.

(Laughter)

But I call this "bleeding-heart" capitalism.

(Laughter)

And we need more people doing this, not less, so here's how.

We break down the walls of our medical maze

by taking the challenges of Medicaid patients,

turning them into opportunities, and pocketing the difference.

The nuts and bolts may seem simple, but they add up.

For example, we have no appointments.

We're walk-in only.

Of course, that's how it works at the emergency room,

at urgent cares and at Taco Bell.

(Laughter)

But not usually at family doctor's offices.

Why do we do it?

Because Nasra can't call for an appointment.

She has a phone, but she doesn't have phone minutes.

She can't speak English, and she can't navigate a phone tree.

And she can't show up on time for an appointment

because she doesn't have a car, she takes the bus,

and she takes care of three kids plus her disabled father.

So we have no appointments;

she shows up when she wants,

but usually waits less than 15 minutes to be seen.

She then spends as much time with us as she needs.

Sometimes that's 40 minutes, usually it's less than five.

She loves this flexibility.

It's how she saw doctors in Somalia.

And I love it, because I don't pay staff to do scheduling,

and we have a zero no-show rate and a zero late-show rate.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

It makes business sense.

Another difference is our office layout.

Our exam rooms open right to the waiting room,

our medical providers room their own patients,

and our providers stay in one room instead of alternating between rooms.

Cutting steps cuts costs and increases customer satisfaction.

We also hand out free medicines, right from our exam room:

over-the-counter ones and some prescription ones, too.

If Nasra's baby is sick,

we put a bottle of children's Tylenol or amoxicillin right in her hand.

She can take that baby straight back home instead of stopping at the pharmacy.

I don't know about you, but I get sick just looking at all those choices.

Nasra doesn't stand a chance in there.

We also text patients.

We're open evenings and weekends.

We do home visits.

We've jumped dead car batteries.

(Laughter)

With customer satisfaction so high, we've never had to advertise,

yet are growing at 25 percent a year.

And we've become real good at working with Medicaid,

since it's pretty much the only insurance company we deal with.

Other doctor's offices chase 10 insurance companies

just to make ends meet.

That's just draining.

A single-payer system is like monogamy: it just works better.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Of course, Medicaid is funded by tax payers like you,

so you might be wondering, "How much does this cost the system?"

Well, we're cheaper than the alternatives.

Some of our patients might go to the emergency room,

which can cost thousands, just for a simple cold.

Some may stay home and let their problems get worse.

But most would try to make an appointment at a clinic that's part of the system

called the Federally Qualified Health Centers.

This is a nationwide network of safety-net clinics

that receive twice as much government funding per visit

than private doctors like me.

Not only they get more money,

but by law, there can only be one in each area.

That means they have a monopoly on special funding for the poor.

And like any monopoly,

there's a tendency for cost to go up and quality to go down.

I'm not a government entity; I'm not a nonprofit.

I'm a private practice.

I have a capitalist drive to innovate.

I have to be fast and friendly.

I have to be cost-effective and culturally sensitive.

I have to be tall, dark and handsome.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

And if I'm not, I'm going out of business.

I can innovate faster than a nonprofit,

because I don't need a meeting to move a stapler.

(Applause)

Really, none of our innovations are new or unique --

we just put them together in a unique way

to help low-income folks while making money.

And then, instead of taking that money home,

I put it back into the refugee community as a business expense.

This is Mango House.

My version of a medical home.

In it, we have programs to feed and clothe the poor,

an after-school program, English classes,

churches, dentist, legal help, mental health and the scout groups.

These programs are run by tenant organizations

and amazing staff,

but all receive some amount of funding form profits from my clinic.

Some call this social entrepreneurship.

I call it social-service arbitrage.

Exploiting inefficiencies in our health care system to serve the poor.

We're serving 15,000 refugees a year

at less cost than where else they would be going.

Of course, there's downsides to doing this as a private business,

rather than as a nonprofit or a government entity.

There's taxes and legal exposures.

There's changing Medicaid rates and specialists who don't take Medicaid.

And there's bomb threats.

Notice there's no apostrophes, it's like,

"We were going to blow up all you refugees!"

(Laughter)

"We were going to blow up all you refugees,

but then we went to your English class, instead."

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Now, you might be thinking, "This guy's a bit different."

(Laughter)

Uncommon.

(Laughter)

A communal narcissist?

(Laughter)

A unicorn, maybe,

because if this was so easy, then other doctors would be doing it.

Well, based on Medicaid rates, you can do this in most of the country.

You can be your own boss,

help the poor and make good money doing it.

Medical folks,

you wrote on your school application essays

that you wanted to help those less fortunate.

But then you had your idealism beaten out of you in training.

Your creativity bred out of you.

It doesn't have to be that way.

You can choose underserved medicine as a lifestyle specialty.

Or you can be a specialist

who cuts cost in order to see low-income folks.

And for the rest of you, who don't work in health care,

what did you write on your applications?

Most of us wanted to save the world, to make a difference.

Maybe you've been successful in your career

but are now looking for that meaning?

How can you get there?

I don't just mean giving a few dollars or a few hours;

I mean how can you use your expertise to innovate new ways of serving others.

It might be easier than you think.

The only way we're going to bridge the underserved medicine gap

is by seeing it as a business opportunity.

The only way we're going to bridge the inequality gap

is by recognizing our privileges and using them to help others.

(Applause)