Fort Collins, Colorado
No insurance is billed here. Not yours, not anybody's, not for anything.
That is the first sentence rather than the small print, because it is the thing people get wrong. You pay $89 a month directly, you get appointments long enough to finish a sentence in, and you get the doctor’s mobile number. There is no card to hand over and no claim to argue about.
- Adult, 26 to 64
- $89
- Adult, 18 to 25
- $59
- Adult, 65 and over
- $109
- Child, with a parent enrolled
- $25
Per month, no joining fee, thirty days’ notice to leave.
Read this list before the other one.
Membership buys primary care. It does not buy a hospital, and the gap between those two things is where every unhappy conversation in this model comes from.
This is not health insurance. Most members hold a high-deductible plan alongside it, and the practice will say so on the first call.
- Hospital care of any kind, including the emergency department
- Specialists, and anything a specialist orders
- Imaging beyond what fits in this building
- Surgery, anaesthesia, and everything around them
- Prescription costs at a pharmacy
- Ambulances
- Maternity care and delivery
- Anything at all once you are admitted anywhere
And this is what it does buy.
How the membership works- Unhurried appointments, thirty to sixty minutes, as many as you need
- Same or next day when something is wrong
- Direct mobile number, answered by the doctor
- Annual visit and ongoing management of chronic conditions
- In-office procedures: stitches, joint injections, skin lesions, ear syringing
- Labs at wholesale, billed at what they cost
- Common medicines dispensed here at wholesale
- Visits by video or phone when that is genuinely enough
The panel
59 places open, and the cap does not move.
One doctor can look after about 350 people properly. Practices that promise same-day access to two thousand are promising somebody else’s time.
59 of 350 places open, as of 1 September
The cap does not move. When it is full there is a list.
- Four to six patients a day, not thirty
- That is the whole arithmetic. A capped panel means the diary is not full of people who booked three weeks ago, which is why there is room for the person who woke up unwell today.
- You get the mobile number
- Not an answering service and not a portal. Most questions are answered by text in an hour and never become an appointment at all.
- Insurance is still worth having
- For the hospital, the specialist, and the surgery — everything on the not-covered list. Membership here is not health insurance and does not replace it.
- You can leave any month
- Thirty days' notice, no exit fee, and no lock-in. If you rejoin later you go on the waiting list like everybody else.
