Beginning this month, Kent-area residents will have a whole new way to get their health care, and though it’s new, it has something of an old flair to it.
“It’s almost like the ‘Marcus Welby, M.D.’ days,” said Norm Wu, president and chief executive officer of Qliance Medical Management, which is opening up a new facility in Kent Station.
According to Wu, Qliance is a “comprehensive primary and preventive-care clinic” that operates outside the insurance system by charging a monthly fee, like a subscription.
“We charge a flat monthly fee which patients or employers can pay directly,” he said. “We are not an insurance plan. We are doctors and nurse practitioners.”
Wu said the idea is simple: Doctors spend a lot of time and money dealing with insurance-company billing issues, cutting back on the time they can spend with each patient and increasing their overhead costs. While insurance works for large issues, such as surgeries and lengthy illnesses, Wu said it has the opposite effect on primary care.
“When you use insurance as a payment mechanism for things that are low-cost and routine … it actually becomes dysfunctional,” he said.
Wu, who founded Qliance along with Dr. Garrison Bliss, said the basic idea idea was to get doctors off the “hamster-wheel existence” of seeing more patients per day in order to cover the costs of insurance overhead, such as hiring staff to fill out the forms and paperwork.
Wu said 40 cents of every dollar that patients pay for primary care is spent on insurance overhead.
“Providers have to track, code, bill for every little thing they do,” Wu said, adding that Bliss and other doctors were beginning to get fed up with the system.
“They said, ‘there must be a better way to do this.'”
The way that Wu and Bliss came up with was Qliance, a primary-care facility in which patients pay a monthly fee and have all of their services covered, from X-rays to lab work to visits with their doctor.
“We eliminate all of that paperwork,” Wu said of insurance costs. “That allows us to have very affordable rates.
Wu said the average monthly cost for Qliance members is $50 to $60 per month.
“It’s like a health club for health care,” he said.
Wu also said Qliance is designed so that people can get in and see a doctor when they need it, which also helps keep costs lower in the long run.
“If you need to be seen, we see you,” he said. “We can get you in the same day and nip things in the bud.”
As for cost, Qliance charges based on age, with monthly fees running between $49 and $79. Customers do not have to sign long-term agreements and can leave at any time. And no one is turned down for any pre-existing conditions.
The Kent facility will be the second for Qliance, which opened its Seattle clinic in July 2007. Wu said the company has an aggressive growth plan that includes a rollout of regional clinics – the first of which is in Kent – and then move into other states over the next few years.
Wu said Kent was selected because many of the company’s members, especially employer members, are light manufacturers located in the Kent valley. Wu said their program helps employers cut costs and decreases absenteeism because sick workers get to see their doctors sooner.
He also said the Seattle facility does not have many families coming in, something else they expect more of in Kent.
“We’re really looking forward to working with patients in the Kent valley,” Wu said.
Unlike doctors who work within the insurance system, Wu said Qliance doctors are not paid per visit so they are also more likely to talk to patients on the phone for simple things.
The system, Wu said, is more like things used to be, when health insurance meant major medical and primary care visits were paid out-of-pocket.
Somewhere along the line, however, “health insurance became synonymous with health care,” he said.
“All we’re saying is go back to the model we know works,” he said.
Qliance is located in Kent Station and will open for business Monday, Aug. 17. Tours are available now. Open Houses are scheduled for 4 to 7 p.m. Aug. 20, 27 and Sept. 3 with a grand opening ceremony and ribbon cutting scheduled for 3:30 – 6 p.m. Sept. 10. For more information call 1-877-QLIANCE or visit www.qliance.com. For a full fee schedule visit http://www.qliance.com/fees.html.
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