Within 1 business day of submitting your Direct Primary Care Member Agreement, you will receive receive a call from our staff and a welcome email (or text) with your physician’s private direct phone number and email address. Please SAVE that contact information into your phone and email contacts.
HOW DO I GET STARTED?
In order for your physician to begin providing medical care to you, he/she must review your medical history and establish a "doctor-patient relationship".
Just schedule a New Patient Appointment (in-office or virtual) and you will receive an email link to our New Patient Medical History Form. It must be completed and submitted online BEFORE your first appointment in order for you to receive medical care from your new doctor at ProPartners Healthcare.
In addition to addressing any current medical needs you may have, we also encourage you to schedule a preventive Health Assessment with your physician so that he/she may get to know you, review all of your medical history, perform a baseline physical exam and discuss preventive care recommendations with you.
CONTACTING YOUR PHYSICIAN
You should always use your physician’s direct phone number (or online portal or email) to communicate with your physician and our office staff.
During Office Hours (7:30 am - 4:30 pm, M-F): Your doctor’s private direct phone number is answered by our staff. If your call isn’t answered live, please leave a voice mail message with your name, date of birth and reason for calling. Our staff will return your call promptly.
After Office Hours/Weekends/Holidays: As soon as our office closes, your doctor’s private phone number rings directly to him/her. If your physician does not answer the call, please leave a message with your name, date of birth and reason for calling. Your doctor will return your call promptly. In the event that your physician is unavailable (vacation, illness, etc.), another ProPartners physician will respond to your call.
FOR EMERGENCIES: Always call 911 if you think you have a medical emergency.
SCHEDULING AN APPOINTMENT
You may schedule an appointment to see your physician in any of our office locations or by virtual visit (phone call or video chat). Members are guaranteed same-day or next-day consultations either in the office or by virtual visit for urgent needs. Appointments for preventive health assessments can typically be scheduled within a week.
To schedule an in-office or virtual appointment, CALL your doctor's direct phone number DURING OFFICE HOURS or request an appointment on our secure patient portal (Elation Passport) and select “Appointments” in the subject line. Please indicate if you are requesting a virtual visit (phone/video chat) or in-person office visit and which office location you prefer. Your appointment has not been scheduled until you receive confirmation from our office staff. Please do not request appointments via text.
TEXTING & EMAIL
You may text or email your doctor directly. Texts to your physician’s direct phone number are sent to your doctor (during and after office hours) as are emails to your doctor’s email address.
Our physicians check their text messages and email regularly between the hours of 7:00 AM and 10:00 PM, but neither texts nor email should be used for urgent communications. If you do not receive a response within the expected time, please assume the message was not received, and call instead. Always CALL your doctor’s direct number if you have an urgent need (and leave a message if your doctor doesn’t answer). Occasionally, in order to protect your confidential health information, responses to your texts/email may be sent through your Elation Passport account. You will be notified when that is the case (see below).
SECURE ONLINE PORTAL (ELATION PASSPORT)
ProPartners maintains a patient portal (Elation Passport) to provide you with direct secure access to your physician, our staff and your electronic medical record. Your physician and ProPartners staff will utilize this portal whenever the information being communicated is deemed sensitive.
Elation Passport lets you keep in touch with your doctor's office between visits, so that your visit takeaways, lab results, and recommended healthcare steps are captured in one place. You may also access clinical information like your allergies or medications for use as a reference and to share with your other clinical providers.
Once your portal account is activated, it may be accessed via our website "Members Only" tab or directly at https://app.elationpassport.com/passport/login/ .
You can securely message your doctor or our office staff about your care, test results or any non-urgent questions you may have. BE SURE TO SELECT the appropriate SUBJECT in the pull-down for new messages to deliver your message to the right person at ProPartners! Our staff only monitors messages on Elation Passport DURING REGULAR OFFICE HOURS. Elation Passport is also a convenient way to request an appointment.
Whenever your physician or ProPartners staff member initiates a portal message, you will receive a text or email notification that a message has been posted to your Elation Passport account. The notification will contain a link to the portal log-in page. You may choose to receive notifications via text or email under “settings” in your portal account.
Please CALL during office hours if you have any problems accessing your portal account.
COMMUNICATION POLICY
Your safety, convenience and privacy are our highest priorities. Our communication systems and policies are designed to comply with federal regulations (HIPAA) in order to protect your privacy. Under all circumstances, our physicians and staff are required to use the communication method that they feel is most appropriate for the information that needs to be conveyed.
When ProPartners physicians and staff communicate with you concerning confidential health information, we will either call you or send secure messages/documents via our patient portal (Elation Passport). If you initiate contact with our office, we will respond “in kind” (using the same method) if appropriate. Be advised that most voice mail, email, and text messages are not secure and technically are not recommended under HIPAA guidelines.
VISIT TYPES
The following guidelines may be helpful in scheduling the appropriate type and length of your appointment.
Many medical questions and concerns may be discussed with your physician over the phone or by video chat, but some medical concerns require an in-office visit. Please consider the following guidelines when determining which type of visit is most appropriate:
Virtual visits (phone, video chat) may be appropriate in many situations. Examples are:
Lab results
Blood pressure follow-up
Respiratory complaints (cough, cold, sore throat, etc.) WITHOUT shortness of breath, wheezing, or chest pain
Simple back strain
Testosterone follow-up
ADD prescription refills
Erectile dysfunction
Rashes (if you can send pictures to the doctor)
In-office visits will be required for certain medical symptoms, including:
Chest pain
Abdominal pain
Shortness of breath/wheezing
Heart palpitations
Syncope (fainting)
Dizziness
Severe headache (new onset)
Testicular pain
Requests for controlled substances (narcotics, sleeping medications, anxiety medications, etc.)
Health Assessments (Preventive/Physicals)
VISIT LENGTH
Your appointment will be scheduled to allow ample time to fully address the stated reason(s) for your visit. When planning your time and reserving ours, please consider the following guidelines for the total time it is anticipated you will be in our office:
| 1 Concern | 30 min. (Virtual visit: 15 min.) |
1 Concern of the following types:
45 min. |
|
| 2-3 Concerns | 45 min. (Virtual visit: 30 min.) |
| 3+ Concerns | 60 min. (Virtual visit: 45 min.) |
| Surgery or Procedure | 45 min. |
| Basic Health Assessment | 1 hour |
| Milestone Health Assessment | 2.5 hours |
PRESCRIPTION REFILLS
Please call your pharmacy first anytime you run out of prescription medications. If you are told you do not have any additional refills authorized, you may ask your pharmacy to send an electronic refill request to your doctor at ProPartners Healthcare.
Our physicians generally authorize refills of chronic medications that will last until you are due for your next follow-up, lab tests or annual health assessment “check-up”. If you run out of daily prescription medications, it probably wasn’t a coincidence. If you know that you are due for your annual check-up or blood tests, please call your doctor’s direct number during office hours to schedule an appointment BEFORE you run out of medication.
Of course, if you have questions or you need to discuss extenuating circumstances, you are always welcome to call your physician’s direct number during office hours to sort it out with our support staff.
MILESTONE HEALTH ASSESSMENT
Our doctors recommend that Members who are over 40 years of age have a Milestone Health Assessment every 5 years. These comprehensive "executive physicals" are offered at a heavily discounted price of about $400, which is less than 20% of retail price. To see what is included in these assessments click: WHAT DO I GET?
AT-COST SERVICES
(not included in membership fee)
ProPartners’ Direct Primary Care memberships cover unrestricted direct access to your personal physician and most other primary care services offered at our offices for a flat monthly fee. In order to provide added value to our Members, we have negotiated significant discounts and at-cost cash prices on many common ancillary medical services that are not covered under our memberships. These services include all blood tests, X-rays, ultrasound, CT scans, MRI, on-site registered dietitian visits, Milestone Health Assessments (executive physicals), treadmill exercise EKG, in-office testing (strep, flu, COVID-19, pregnancy), tetanus (TDAP) shots, corticosteroid injections, and referral to unaffiliated providers who offer reduced prices to our Members.
Given the popularity of high-deductible health plans and health savings accounts (HSA), many of these services when received at other healthcare providers would be paid directly by patients at retail or insurance-determined prices. ProPartners’ discounted prices are often considerably less than what you might pay out-of-pocket when these services are filed with your insurance. In general terms, ProPartners discounted cash prices may be as little as 10% of retail prices and one third of insurance-mediated pricing.
Our prices are transparent. We will generally inform you in advance what to expect to pay for our ancillary services and, if you ever have a question, please ask. Because our prices generally save our members money over filing with their insurance and they are generally offered at our cost, we will assume that you want to take advantage of these prices. If you prefer to be sent to a lab, imaging center or other provider that can file any ancillary services with your insurance, you are welcome to ask and we will arrange it.
BE AWARE: If you choose to have ancillary services filed with your insurance and they end up costing you more than our in-house prices, you are bound by your decision and there is nothing we can do to reverse charges, deductibles and copayments billed by outside providers or your insurance plan.
OUTSIDE SERVICES
When it is necessary to send you outside our office for specialized services, we will work with you to refer you to a provider who is in network with your insurance, if you wish to use it.
As described in the previous section, ProPartners has negotiated dramatically reduced discounts for labs, imaging and other ancillary services but you are under no obligation to purchase these services from us. You are always welcome to ask for referrals to other medical service providers that may be able to file with your insurance company. Be aware that YOU must accept the responsibility for the (likely higher) prices and out-of-pocket costs, in the event that these outside services are not considered “covered” by your insurance carrier or if your payment is applied to your deductible.