How the Amish Made Me a Better Doctor

How the Amish Made Me a Better Doctor

I’ve spent the last three years of my career as a doctor for the Amish.  It is frontier medicine.  I can regale you with stories of mangled hands immersed in cans of kerosene, arms and legs impaled with any number of small metal objects, injuries wrought by farm animals and table saws, of medical problems in states of extremis seldom seen and treated in outpatient clinics, of croupy toddlers finding relief from my breathing treatments at 2am. 

What is Direct Primary Care? (Part 3 of 3)

This post will conclude my three-part series, “What is Direct Primary Care?”  In the first post, I defined Direct Primary Care (DPC) and talked about the first of three distinctives that will set CovenantMD apart from other practices:  adequate time with your doctor.  In the second post, I talked about access to your doctor.  In this post, I’ll talk about value in primary care. 

What is Direct Primary Care? (Part 2 of 3)

What is Direct Primary Care?  (Part 2 of 3)

What do I mean by “access?”  Put simply, it’s how patients engage their primary care provider in order to get a question answered, or to be seen for a medical problem during business hours, or to be seen for an acute problem after business hours or on holidays or weekends.  If all things were equal, and you had ideal access to primary care, what would it look like?

What is Direct Primary Care? And What Are the Benefits?

What is Direct Primary Care?  And What Are the Benefits?

I am Patrick Rohal, M.D., a family doctor and the founder of CovenantMD, Lancaster’s first Direct Primary Care practice, which will be opening in January, 2016.  I launched my website (www.covenantmd.net) on Tuesday, and posted announcements on Facebook and LinkedIn.  That made Tuesday a wonderful flurry of exchanging digital "high fives" with friends and collaborators, and answering questions with prospective patients.  As the first post on my News page on the website, I wanted to take a few minutes and explain Direct Primary Care.