With all the advancements in modern medicine, there is still a vital part of doctor patient care that Dr. Dina Bacon that must remain a fixture, and that is the doctor-patient relationship.
However, Bacon believes and has seen firsthand that the strength and emphasis on building these relationships has become less of a priority for many in the medical field and it is an approach she is looking to change with the opening of her new practice PURE DPC Medicine + Aesthetics located near Palencia at 442 Paseo Reyes Drive in St. Augustine.
She opened earlier this month after moving from Arizona, where she first began her journey and focused on the direct primary care option.
“My husband and I knew we wanted to end up here because we love the beach and the weather,” Bacon said.
She was a nurse for 25 years in Yuma, Arizona, including spending 18 years working in an emergency room.
However, although she only recently dived fully into the world of direct patient care, she always knew that she wanted to search for an alternative approach, after her son died of brain cancer at eight years old.
“You realize that life is short,” Bacon said.
She then got into hospice, which proved to be an eye-opening experience for her.
“It was really appalling to me how the patients weren’t being taken care of the way they should have been,” Bacon said. “So, I went into medical school in my 40s and finished my residency in June at 51 years old.”
She had initially planned on hospital work once she finished and won the 2023 Family Medicine Resident Physician of the Year award by the Arizona Academy of Family Physicians.
However, she had heard about direct patient care and after doing further research into it, discovered that it seemed the perfect fit for her and her healthcare mission.
“It just seemed to fit me,” Bacon said.
One of the interesting things about it is that the concept itself is not a new approach at all, and she has found that it is the way doctors and patients used to approach things, when relationships were the center of everything.
An example is that in the direct patient care model, consultations last between 30 to 90 minutes, depending on the patient and their concerns, instead of the roughly 10 minutes Bacon said a consultation has become in most medical practices.
“It’s just gotten to where everything feels so rushed, and it becomes difficult to get an accurate diagnosis,” Bacon said. “If I want to help my patient, I need to know my patient.”
The consultations and procedures are paid for by monthly membership dues instead of through the traditional insurance methods.
“Our medical system is broken,” Bacon said. “This is a model of healthcare that goes back to the patients. It’s just me, I’m the nurse, the doctor, and the secretary, but not paying for employees allows me to keep the price low.”
A monthly due is $100 for adults, and the price varies for children, because Bacon accepts the entire family from infants to grandparents.
She believes 500 patients is the “sweet spot” in the number she wishes her practice to eventually max out at, because any more than that and she fears the quality of the care would begin to suffer.
Every new patient gets the “meet and greet” opportunity before becoming a member.
“This is probably the most important part in the process, because it is the chance to see if you like me and for me to trust you,” Bacon said. “It is the start of that potential relationship.”
Some of the many services offered at PURE DPC include annual preventative exams, sports physicals, annual lab tests, and procedures, such as skin biopsies.
