Medical care availability without insurance
POOLER, GA (WTOC)
Dr. Pete and Christi Ghaleb opened up a direct primary care, or DPC, this January called Family Medicine of Pooler. They don't take insurance for anything including office visits, in house labs, wholesale medicine and small procedures at a low monthly cost of $10-$100 depending on your age.
"What we're trying to do instead is try to spread the word to other physicians particularly in our area because we love Savannah and we want more doctors providing this for their patients, but they don't know about it," said Dr. Pete Ghaleb.
"It became very daunting with all of the paperwork and regulations and things that you had to go through,” said Dr. Christi Ghaleb. “So this way it’s getting back to basics again and I can enjoy what I do and why I actually got into medicine."
Dr. Christie, who used to work at Memorial, handles the medicine side of things while Dr. Pete handles the business side of things.
"Our original goal in this was not to save patients money,” said Dr. Pete Ghaleb. “That's a byproduct of what it’s doing. It’s for better patient care and that to me is invaluable."
They now can prescribe and dispense medications, so they're getting the same wholesale price as pharmacies. Some as low as $1 a month.
"So before we did this in the traditional care seeing patients its really dictated by the insurance companies and it’s been less and less time throughout the years really,” said Dr. Pete Ghaleb “So now we're on 7 1/2 or 15 minute slots and you have to be with the next patient. In fact, we would break that often and get in trouble by the insurance companies because we were spending too much time doing to thorough of exams."
They're not telling people to not get insurance, but advising people to get one with a higher deductible plan in the case of a catastrophe or emergency.
They say it’s not about making money but being able to enjoy what you do as a doctor.
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