Introducing R-Health – Proactive, Affordable and Readily Accessible Healthcare for Employers, Unions, Individuals and Families
for R-HealthKevin Jurrens, 215-867-8600 x273
With the rising cost of healthcare suffocating businesses in the U.S., employers are increasingly saddled with harsh choices – sacrifice profits, slash the workforce, or force employees to pay an ever greater share of healthcare costs. Meanwhile, although American healthcare is highly effective in treating disease, it lags far behind many nations in keeping people from becoming ill in the first place.
This has relegated primary care physicians to the role of referral agents. Instead of delivering personalized, coordinated care and health counseling, the fee-for-service model forces family doctors to cram in as many patients as possible. Wait times are onerous and the bulk of care is pushed “downstream” to expensive specialists, hospitals and urgent care centers, whereas a family doctor could realistically handle 80-90 percent of what nearly everyone needs in terms of health management.
A new venture launched today, , aims to change this approach to healthcare, by liberating primary care from the costly, inefficient fee-for-service model and providing convenient, reliable access to physicians for one affordable monthly membership fee. By contracting directly with R-Health, employers can realize a healthier, more productive workforce, while significantly reducing costs.
With R-Health, , benefit from personalized primary care that includes same- or next-day appointments with no co-pay, coinsurance, or deductible. R-Health leverages technology to enhance patient-physician communication, with phone consultations and e-visits. Extended and weekend hours, unhurried offices visits, on-site generic prescriptions, and proactive wellness education are all designed to promote health, rather than react to illness.
R-Health’s mission is to fundamentally change the underpinning primary care by carving primary care from the realm of insurance, and creating a model where the patient becomes a member of the practice. The doctor has a personal relationship with the patient and a responsibility not to “do more/bill more”, but to proactively guide member patients on a path of health and wellness.
“The predominant fee-for-service model in the U.S. is unsustainable,” said . “This system creates perverse economic incentives that require primary care doctors to see 30 to 35 patients each day just to make a living. Rather than being accessible, proactive champions of wellness, they wind up serving as referral agents for costly – and often unnecessary – specialists. It maximizes costs while minimizing the communication that is essential to an efficient, effective doctor-patient relationship. So we need to change the paradigm – switch the model and push as much care into the relatively inexpensive primary care setting where there’s that relationship. Then you are promoting and managing health instead of just treating illness. This is the essence of R-Health. ”
“The foundation of personalized, proactive healthcare is built on the bedrock of a strong, interactive relationship between a patient and his or her primary care physician,” noted “This relationship allows for engagement that leads to positive change. But that relationship does not develop in an 8-minute office visit. The inaccessibility of primary care physicians leads to tremendous waste, including unnecessary and expensive ER visits and hospitalizations, redundant testing and missed prevention opportunities. R-Health was conceived with the goal of providing ready access to a personal primary care doctor who serves not only as a coordinator of care, but as a proactive champion of wellness.”
Headquartered in Philadelphia, R-Health represents a new destination for superior primary care for employers, unions, individuals and families. For just $79 per month, members gain convenient access to physicians, while employers improve the health and happiness of their workforces – and improve their bottom line.
R-Health's innovative Direct Primary Care model is designed to deliver better healthcare at a lower cost. R-Health Direct Primary Care liberates primary care from the administrative cost burden and negative incentives of the current fee-for-service insurance system. Physicians can deliver personalized, effective, coordinated, patient-centered care that is focused on one goal — the health and satisfaction of patients. There is no incentive to generate more billing codes by seeing more patients and performing more procedures. Patients are seen on schedule and the physician can spend the necessary time with each patient to truly understand and advise them. For more information visit .