Im sorry that has been your experience. I am too on a patient of a doctor who belongs to a "large health system/insurance system provided by my employer with no choice". I have never once discussed billing. Every visit, while short 10-15 minutes, is focused on my health and if I asked questions, can extend to 30+ or more... really depends on my questions. I have never needed an hour with a GP, maybe a specialist.
I should clarify: the billing talk would come out when talking about options. “Let’s try X because insurance will need to see that we tried it before we try Y.” I don’t blame the provider. Navigating insurance still comes up with my direct primary care doc, but it’s not most of the visit. The real value I see is a willingness to take the whole picture into account (not just symptom -> med/specialist) and teach me about how things work and why. I have some complexity in my history for which this helps a lot.
Regarding the patient load discussion elsewhere, our entire family uses this doctor, we’re in for $200/mo but if we added up the interaction time even with me (a more complicated customer) it’s maybe 5 hours a year + some text communications with the MA / prescription wrangling. Their model seems to be all about effective scaling, I hope it is worth it for them, because my experience is vastly improved.
