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A new health clinic in Fort Collins is offering a unique way to get the health care you need at an affordable price.
Hometown Family Health was founded in mid-2020 by Dr. Trevin Cardone and his wife Allison Cardone, a certified personal trainer. The clinic is taking health care in a new direction, eliminating the need for insurance and providing quality services to patients of all ages.
The couple, who both grew up in Fort Collins, attribute the clinic’s name to their love of the area.
As Trevin, a doctor of osteopathic medicine, continued his medical residency program at UcheHealth in Fort Collins, he began to learn more about patient care and how insurance plays a vital role in health care — for both patients and physicians. .
“Working in ‘the system’ doesn’t take much time to spend with people,” Trevin says. “That’s not how I wanted to practice medicine. And, family medicine and primary care medicine, the way the system works, it’s hard to find people who are independent anymore.”
Creating a “relationship” with his patients and making sure they could find their providers when they needed them was a priority for Trevin, so he and his wife, Allison, began looking at ways to offer a different approach to health care. For community members of all ages and economic levels.
“Scottsdale has a lot of what people call concierge medical practices that are similar to what we do. They have an annual membership and billable insurance, so that cuts things down. But they cater to great things,” Trevin said. “I spent some time with the two of them and I really liked their day; they got to spend time with people and develop relationships. But I didn’t like that it was expensive.”
While still in medical school, Trevin met a colleague who was in the process of opening a subscription-based medical practice known as Direct Primary Care, DPC.
“So I got him and his partner to open up their practice and spend a lot of time with them,” Trevin said. “They were doing a model like this (DPC) and I loved it.”
DPC cuts insurance companies out of the health care equation by making patients pay a monthly fee for care. Patients do not pay any service fees and there are no third-party fees, which increase costs.
“DPC clinics provide better access to physicians, promote accurate medical communication and holistic patient care,” according to the Direct Primary Care Coalition website. “Patients have unlimited access to their health care provider, report no wait times and (experience) longer appointments.”
DPC clinics are considered more transparent with fees and most memberships cost less than a cell phone bill.
To date, the US has approximately 1,600 DPC practices in 48 states, providing care to more than 300,000 patients. Between Fort Collins and Loveland, there are four DPC clinics with more in Denver and Colorado Springs.
“I’m probably the new me. We’ve been open a year and a half and a couple of the rest have been open a few years and they’re thriving,” Trevin said. “The fun part is that we’re all independent of each other, but we’re all small. And we cooperate. That’s the beauty of it – we can be small and be small.”
Where traditional family or primary care practices have 2,500-3,000 patients, DPC clinics sell for 500.
“They have to see someone every 15 minutes so they have to burn and burn,” Trevin said. “So we’re going to be small and that’s going to allow us to offer patients everything we say we offer.”
Hometown Family Health offers a variety of services including pediatric wellness exams, sports and physical therapy, ear irrigation, dermatology procedures, telemedicine, lab work and more for patients of all ages. If a patient needs more specialized care, the clinic has relationships with various specialists.
“We never tell people that this is a substitute for insurance. Membership covers everything we can do and the extra benefits we’ve come up with and negotiated,” Trevin said. We tell people if you have insurance, keep it, but in our world it doesn’t make sense because we can provide treatment for less.
The clinic gets the lab for $1, why would they get insurance to pay for it, he explained.
“When you have insurance, all the billing and the brokers and all the prices go up because you have to pay everyone in between,” Trevin said. “This works well for everyone. I have patients who have good insurance, but they come to see me because of the accessibility, the personalization and the convenience.”
The clinic has “a lot of patients who are completely uninsured,” such as small businesses or part-time workers.
Because the clinic does not accept insurance, unfortunately they cannot see Medicare or Medicaid patients. However, the Kardons are working to make it possible to serve this segment of society.
Monthly memberships are $85 for adults 50 and older, $75 for adults 20-49, and $25 for children up to 19 with an adult parent as a member. For children without an adult parent as a member, the monthly fee is $45 per month.
The clinic also offers family memberships. Patients are charged a one-time $50 fee, with a maximum of $150 per family.
“So it’s an ongoing month-to-month subscription. We try to make it as simple as possible and include anything and everything we can do,” Trevin said. “There’s no limit if people see me once a month, once a year or once a week and they don’t pay a co-pay or anything extra for their visit.”
The clinic offers health care packages to employers who cannot afford traditional health care insurance programs.
The clinic is open from 8am to 5pm Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and closed on Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday.
Hometown Family Health is located at 2720 Council Tree Ave., Suite 230 in Fort Collins.
For more information or to schedule an appointment, go to www.hometownfamily.com Or call (970) 658-5520.
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