MEDFORD — Taylored Family Care Clinic in Medford will soon open a Phillips office. The fee-per-visit clinic model is designed to provide transparency and remove other costly network and insurance overhead is set to open mid-summer in the former Flambeau Home Health and Hospice office at 133 N. Lake Avenue.
Rebecca Gilbertson, family nurse practitioner with a doctorate in nursing practice, founded Taylored Family Care Clinic in 2013. Steady growth, patient data showing a growth in Price County and Ashland County patients, led to a planning process for the Phillips expansion, according to Jake Brehm, director of clinic operations.
“We are excited to announce our expansion to Price County,” Brehm said. “This expansion will allow us to continue providing cost-effective solutions to businesses seeking control of their healthcare costs, as well as individuals looking for alternatives to large healthcare systems.”
The former hospice office was ideal in providing the least investment for a clinic conversion over other locations, he said. It was practically a clinic design already.
“It’s halfway there,” Brehm said. “All that’s needed is the aesthetic stuff.”
Two certified family nurse practitioners will work out of the Phillips office, including Mike Borge who also lives in Phillips.
“As a resident with deep roots in Phillips, I am excited to offer our unique services to my home community,” Borgen said. “While splitting my time between our Phillips and Medford locations, I look forward to additional time spent with my wife Kayla, as well as cheering on my kids in local sporting events. I am looking forward to meeting the healthcare needs of the Phillips and surrounding communities soon.”
What separates Taylored Family Care Clinic from the health system model is that the Taylored Family Health is a basic clinic with added managed care and occupational health services, Brehm said. The clinic is designed to be accessible to anyone regardless of health insurance or any affiliation with a health system.
Gilbertson and the clinic staff were all once part of the health system model of networks and insurers and felt that was all getting too costly and complicated, he said. Gilbertson saw the set fees for service model as a solution to a system that limits who can receive care, and has a general lack of transparency in pricing, along with the co-pays and deductibles, the in-network and out-of-network worries.
“All that stuff,” Brehm said.
The clinic is basically taking health care back to providers and patients, he said. The clinic eliminates the need for medical coders, denials teams and all those involved in a revenue cycle of a health system. The lower fees allow people to choose a less expensive insurance plan with higher deductible for catastrophic care.
“Basically, we took out all the middlemen in the process,” Brehm said. “Those positions are expensive, there’s overhead. So since we don’t bill insurance, we don’t have to have that.”
A three-tiered clinic fee structure starts with level one visits for things such as eyes, ears, nose and throat minor infections and school sports physicals or pregnancy testing. Level two includes adult physicals, chronic illness management or follow ups on lab testing or physician consults. Level three would be for more intensive health management, sutures and preoperative physicals. The three levels range from $90 to $150 per visit plus a few additional services that are also price listed.
Outside care and hospitals are obviously still necessary for higher health concerns, Brehm said. The clinic refers to health care with physicians and technology when needed — and the staff can help identify a more inexpensive third party source for medical imaging or a surgery center that may be a little further away but could save thousands of dollars.
“I visit these centers, I look at their quality outcomes, I look at their pricing, I talk about the referral options, and we educate our staff here on what those options are so that they can help streamline it for everybody else,” he said. “Healthcare is really hard to navigate if you don’t understand it.”
The clinic can handle most primary care needs. The idea is to encourage people to seek care when concerns are not as serious when they might not if they fear a large bill for something minor or something that turns out to be nothing.
“You want them to be able to come in early and have good access,” he said. “Ultimately, we’re taking the barriers away they have to using healthcare currently.”
The clinic is also structured to help businesses and local governments reduce health insurance costs through self-funded plans to process claims as they go with the clinic plan, he said. So far the clinic has contracted with Medford area six businesses and Taylor County. The clinic is in discussion with four Phillips area businesses and has made presentations to Price County.
“We had a company save over $400,000 last year from coming here compared to what they would have paid if they went to a larger system for the same care,” Brehm said.
The clinic also helps companies save by providing occupational health services and are licensed to perform Department of Transportation physicals, pre-employment physicals, drug screenings, fitness testing and audiograms.
“We partner with businesses for family practice stuff, so that they can send their employees to us who don’t pay a penny, and then we save the business money for all this stuff,” he said.
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