Direct Primary Care

Direct primary care is primary care offered direct to the consumer, without insurance intervention. It incorporates various health care delivery systems that involve direct financial relationships between patients and health care providers. One niche variant of direct primary care is concierge medicine. Direct primary care can remove many of the financial barriers to accessing care when needed. Often, there are no insurance co-pays, deductibles or co-insurance fees thus avoiding the overhead and complexity of maintaining relationships with insurers. Under this model, patients may pay a combination of visit fees and/or fixed monthly fees, which grant them access to a set of medical services, including same and next-day appointments, both in the form of house calls and office visits. A direct primary care arrangement benefits from pairing with either: a high-deductible health plan, as direct primary care alone will not cover catastrophic health care such as most surgeries, a health savings account, or health reimbursement account as the associated tax-benefits can generally be applied to direct primary care and other medical expenses. Direct primary care practices do not typically accept insurance payments, thus avoiding the overhead and complexity of maintaining relationships with insurers, which can consume as much as $0.40 of each medical dollar spent. Direct primary care payments are over time, rather than in return for specific services, the economic incentives are such that the long-term health of the patient is the most lucrative situation for the doctor. Preventative care gains greater emphasis under direct primary care. Because the primary care physician compensation is better than it would be under insurance billing, doctors can afford to spend more time with the patient, rather than simply referring them to a highly paid specialist after a short consultation. Boutique medicine is a type of medical practice now found in many metropolitan areas across the country. Also known as, concierge health care, concierge medicine, or retainer medicine, the concept has come to represent a higher level of healthcare for those who want a more personalized relationship with their physician. This model has proven successful for those physicians who want to see a fewer number of patients on a day to day basis, thus allowing them to spend more time nourishing individual patient relationships.

Epiderme

Epiderme is the one-stop for skin care. Moisturizers help keep skin youthful with elasticity. The epidermis is the outer layer of the skin. The epidermis helps the skin to regulate body temperature. The epidermis with the dermis forms the cutis. The epidermis is composed of four to five layers of skin, depending on the region of skin. The epidermis contains no blood vessels and nourishment of cells is by diffusion in the deepest layers from blood capillaries extending to the upper layers of the dermis. The amount and distribution of melanin pigment in the epidermis results in skin color variation in Homo sapiens. Melanin is in the small melanosomes, particles formed in melanocytes from surrounding keratinocytes. The size, number and arrangement of the melansomes varies between racial groups, but while the number of melanocytes can vary between different body regions, the number of melansomes remain the same in individual body regions in all human beings. In white and oriental skin, the melansomes aggregate but are small in size. Comparatively, in black skin, the melansomes are larger and distributed more evenly. The number of melansomes in the keratinocytes increases with UV radiation exposure, while their distribution remains largely unaffected.

Acne Vulgaris

Changes in the pilosebaceous units (skin structures consisting of a hair follicle and the associated subcutaneous gland) result in acne vulgaris. Severe acne is inflammatory, but acne can also manifest in non-inflammatory forms. Acne lesions are pimples, spots or zits. Acne is most common during adolescence, affecting more than affecting more than 85 percent of teenagers, and frequently continues into adulthood. For most people, acne diminishes over time and tends to disappear, or at the very least decrease after the early twenties. There is, however, no way to predict how long acne can take to disappear entirely, and some individuals continue to suffer well into their thirties, forties and beyond. Most commonly, the face and upper neck regions are affected, but there may be acne on the chest, back and shoulders as well. Acne may appear on the upper arms, but lesions found there are often keratosis pilaris, not acne. Typical acne lesions are comedones, inflammatory papules, pustules and nodules. Some of the large nodules are cysts and nodulocystic describes severe cases of inflammatory acne.

Rash

Rashes involve changes in the color or texture of the skin. Doctors can determine the cause of a rash from its visible characteristics and other symptoms. Dermatitis is the name of a simple rash and means inflammation of the skin. Contact dermatitis presents from things the skin touches, such as: dyes and other chemicals in clothing; chemicals in elastic, latex and rubber products; cosmetics, soaps and detergents; and poison ivy and oak.