Center for Family Health West Michigan

Everyone should have access to healthcare. That is not just a political statement on our part, but a deeply held belief. The difference for us when we make that statement is: we are doing something about it.

When we started the Center for Family Health in Grand Rapids, Michigan, we began with the idea that basic healthcare is a necessity, not a luxury. We knew that we had to have a platform for change, so we started with a traditional doctor’s office, and then looked at what could be done better.

Here is what we learned:

• The most important aspect of healthcare is primary healthcare, which includes the basic preventative stuff like physicals, immunizations, flu shots. But it also includes the ability to get prescriptions filled inexpensively.


• Access to insurance does not mean access to healthcare. Oftentimes, patients are allowed to purchase insurance, such as COBRA, but just cannot afford to make the premiums, or the co-pays, or the office visits, or the prescription fees.


• Each year, healthcare benefits get more and more expensive, something on the order of 20% increases each year. Employers who cannot afford these staggering increases cut benefits and raise deductibles, shifting costs to the patient. And the benefits that almost always get cut first are wellness programs and primary healthcare services.


• There are numerous studies that empirically show that preventative and primary care dollars invested yield the greatest overall savings and promote better patient outcomes. However, this fact seems lost on employer decision-makers.


• Neither providers (doctors) nor users (patients) understand the true costs of accepting or using health insurance. As a result the marketplace is wholly inefficient, causing skewing of prices charged and prices paid as well as dissatisfaction and avoidance of care on the part of the patient.


• Billing 3rd party insurances is complicated, time consuming and unpredictable. Doctors who bill insurances are forced to bill at an artificially high rate in order to capture 100% of the discounted rate offered by each insurance company (that rate varies from company to company). The wide range of reimbursement levels from insurance company to insurance company and government program vs. private insurance company forces the business-savvy doctor to constantly evaluate the practice and patient mix so as to maximize earning potential and causes doctors who are not as business savvy to go bankrupt even though they have a full practice.


• The coding process that is required for billing demands that doctors employ either a full time billing specialist or hire an outside billing firm. The cost of billing averages about $8.50 per bill sent out if the doctor employs a billing specialist and about 10% of the monies collected if a billing service is used.

So with all of these problems inherent in “the system”, we decided there had to be a better way to unravel the proverbial ball of string. The idea was to create a program for individuals and businesses where patients could see a primary care doctor any time, as often as needed for a flat fee, taking all of the insurance and billing headaches out of the equation.

We did just that with the Essential Health Services Plan.

Our grand vision and hope is that we are able to take this model and replicate in every city that has the same needs that we experience here in Grand Rapids and Michigan in general. And we know that by taking ownership and taking interest in one’s own healthcare, patients are better educated, more engaged and healthy. That’s the kind of win we can all live with.