Membership-based primary care comes to Homewood

Dr. Efe Sahinoglu has opened his unusual primary care concept in Homewood, celebrating in late May with a socially-distanced ribbon cutting ceremony.

He founded Birmingham Direct Primary Care in fall of 2018 with the ultimate goal of providing individualized, unrushed, easily accessible yet affordable primary care. He started his practice in Hoover, but since November 2019, he’s been planning his move to Homewood, which offers a more central and visible location for his office, Sahinoglu said.

His clinic uses a model that’s different from most other primary care services. Patients pay a monthly fee, just like a gym membership, and insurance is left out of the picture.

“You don’t necessarily need to use insurance for your everyday things, just like we don’t use our car insurance for our common tire rotations and oil changes,” Sahinoglu said.

He still encourages his patients to have insurance, he said, but they can use their insurance the way Sahinoglu said insurance is meant to be used: for more expensive doctor visits and catastrophic events.

Not using insurance means Sahinoglu is able to spend more time with his patients. Insurance requires lots of admin costs, he said, which increases overhead costs. To offset these costs, primary care clinics who take insurance will typically need to see about 30 to 40 patients a day. Sahinoglu sees six to eight patients a day and spends up to an hour with each of them.

“I can spend a lot more time with my patients, and that really makes me do a lot more for the patients,” he said. “I actually get to build rapport with the patients and practice preventative medicine and be accessible to them.”

As part of their membership fee, patients can call or text Sahinoglu, even after hours. When The Homewood Star spoke to Sahinoglu, he said he had a patient text him the night before, and the patient was about to go to the emergency room because of a migraine.

“We talked it through, and I told them what medications to take,” Sahinoglu said. “Within half an hour, the patient was fine and didn’t need an ER visit.”

Because telemedicine has been part of his business model since the start, the novel coronavirus pandemic didn’t hinder his business much, he said.

“My patients can always text me or do a video chat,” he said. “So I was still able to provide care for my patients, even as they were kind of hesitant, just like everyone else, to go into a doctor’s office. ... Our clinic was already kind of set up to work around this.”

In addition, his patients didn’t have to worry about catching coronavirus from other patients in the waiting room. Since his clinic is appointment-based and he only sees about six to eight patients a day, the “waiting room” is somewhat a misnomer, he said, laughing. His patients only need to sit in the waiting room if they arrive early for their appointment.

He has patients from all over the area — not only from the greater Birmingham area, but also from cities like Pelham and Tuscaloosa. Because there is no waiting, Sahinoglu said, people are willing to drive a little farther to see him.

“I can see my patients on the same day or the next day, so there’s not any waiting,” he said. “Driving 20 minutes for your appointment here but not having to wait in the waiting room is often more convenient than driving for a few minutes but waiting for an hour.”

Birmingham Direct Primary Care is located on 921 Oxmoor Road. For more information about pricing and services that it offers, visit birminghamdpc.com or call 205-582-3323.

“I’m really excited to be in Homewood in a more central, visible location and to be able to serve more folks in Birmingham,” he said.