Rethinking Healthcare: Why Employers Are Looking to Direct Primary Care

For decades, employers have watched healthcare costs rise while employees have faced longer waits, shorter appointments, confusing bills, and increasing difficulty navigating the healthcare system. What if improving healthcare started by making primary care simpler?
 
That is the idea behind Direct Primary Care (DPC), an innovative healthcare model gaining momentum among employers—and one that Pinnacle Advanced Primary Care is helping advance right here in Colorado.

Pinnacle is a locally owned, physician-led Direct Primary Care organization serving thousands of Coloradans and partnering with more than 150 local employers, including businesses and organizations throughout the South Metro Denver community.
 
Those employers range from small businesses with just a handful of employees to organizations with more than 1,200 covered members. While their benefit strategies may look very different, many share the same goal: give employees better access to healthcare while finding smarter ways to manage rising costs.
 
What Is Direct Primary Care?

The concept is surprisingly simple.
Instead of billing insurance every time a patient visits their primary care provider, Direct Primary Care operates through a predictable monthly membership.
 
At Pinnacle, that membership provides access to everyday primary care, including unlimited visits, same- and next-day appointments, longer appointments, virtual care, and direct access to the healthcare team. Members can also access transparent, significantly reduced pricing on many labs, medications, and procedures.
 
Insurance still plays an important role for major medical expenses such as hospitalization, surgery, and emergencies. DPC simply changes how everyday primary care is delivered and paid for. Think of it as putting primary care back at the center of healthcare rather than treating it as another transaction within the insurance system.
 
Why Does This Matter to Employers?

For employers, access to healthcare is also a workforce issue. An employee who cannot see a primary care provider for several weeks still needs care. They may visit urgent care, go to an emergency room, miss additional work, or simply put off care until the problem becomes more serious.

Direct Primary Care creates another path. When employees have easier access to a healthcare team that knows them, routine and acute health needs can often be addressed sooner. Chronic conditions can be managed more consistently, and providers can help patients navigate referrals and other parts of the healthcare system when additional care is needed.
 
The South Metro Denver Chamber has seen the model from both sides—as an organization representing local employers and as an employer itself. The Chamber chose Pinnacle and Direct Primary Care for its own team.
 
“As a Chamber, we're always looking for innovative solutions that can help businesses take better care of their people while managing costs,” said Jeff Keener, President & CEO of the South Metro Denver Chamber.
 
For Keener, DPC offered the Chamber a model that addressed both priorities. “We chose Direct Primary Care because it gives our own team meaningful access to healthcare through a model that's simple, affordable, and easy to use,” he said.

The Chamber's experience also gives Keener a reason to encourage other local employers to understand the model. “It's the kind of innovation we want our members to know is available right here in our community.”

For employers, that accessibility can mean fewer barriers to care, less time away from work, a better employee experience, and opportunities to avoid unnecessary healthcare spending.
 
It also gives businesses something increasingly difficult to find: a healthcare benefit employees can see, understand, and actually use.
 
Giving Small Businesses Another Option

Those considerations can be particularly important for small and midsized businesses.
Smaller employers may not have the benefit budgets or purchasing power of large corporations, but they are still competing for the same talented employees. That means finding creative ways to offer benefits that are financially sustainable for the business and genuinely valuable to the people receiving them.
 
For Talia Bond of PostNet Centennial, that need for creativity was part of the appeal.
“Small businesses have to be creative about how we take care of our people,” Bond said.
 
She found the simplicity of Direct Primary Care particularly attractive. “I liked Direct Primary Care because it's straightforward, affordable, and gives our team access to real healthcare—not just an insurance card.”
 
That last point highlights an important distinction for smaller employers. A healthcare benefit provides limited value if an employee can't afford to use it or has difficulty getting an appointment when care is needed.
 
DPC provides another option—one that can stand on its own as a valuable primary care benefit or complement a broader employee benefits strategy.

A Different Approach to Healthcare Costs

Healthcare affordability is often discussed almost entirely in terms of insurance premiums. But insurance is only one part of the equation.
 
Employers should also be asking: Where are our healthcare dollars going? Are employees getting care in the right setting? Can conditions be addressed before they become more expensive? Are employees using an emergency room for something that could have been handled in primary care?
 
Direct Primary Care gives employers another tool for addressing those questions. For some businesses, DPC is offered alongside traditional health insurance. Others pair it with high-deductible plans or alternative healthcare arrangements. Larger employers may incorporate DPC into a self-funded health plan as part of a broader strategy to better manage healthcare utilization and costs.
 
There is no single approach that works for every employer. What is changing is the assumption that employers simply have to accept the traditional healthcare model exactly as it exists.
 
Innovation Is Happening Locally

​Some of the most exciting healthcare innovation isn't happening in Washington or inside a national insurance company. It's happening within local businesses and communities.
 
Pinnacle was built in Colorado around the belief that primary care can be more personal, accessible, transparent, and affordable.
 
Today, more than 150 Colorado employers have partnered with Pinnacle, including a growing number of South Metro Denver Chamber members. Those partnerships range from small, locally owned businesses to large employer groups.

For Sean and Michelle Meade of Guardian Pest Management, the decision was about balancing an investment in their employees with the realities of running a business.
“We wanted to invest in our employees, but we also needed something that made sense for our business,” the Meades said.
 
Direct Primary Care gave them a way to accomplish both. “Direct Primary Care gave us a way to provide meaningful healthcare access with predictable costs and a much more personal experience for our team.”

Their experience reflects a larger shift taking place among employers. Direct Primary Care is not simply an alternative for individuals who want a different doctor. It is increasingly becoming part of the conversation about how employers design healthcare benefits.

And employers are uniquely positioned to drive that innovation. Businesses purchase healthcare on behalf of millions of Americans. When employers begin demanding greater transparency, easier access, stronger primary care, and better value for their healthcare dollars, the market responds.
 
The Future: Putting Primary Care Back at the Center

The future of healthcare will require more than finding new ways to pay increasingly expensive bills.
 
It will require asking how we keep people healthier, identify problems earlier, improve access, and help patients navigate an increasingly complicated system.
 
Primary care has an important role to play in each of those areas. Direct Primary Care offers one glimpse of what that future could look like: patients having a relationship with a healthcare team that knows them; employers offering a benefit their employees can easily access; providers having more time with patients; and healthcare costs becoming more transparent.
 
And the experiences of employers like the South Metro Denver Chamber, PostNet Centennial, and Guardian Pest Management suggest this isn't simply a conversation about the future. Local employers are already putting the model to work.
 
Direct Primary Care doesn't eliminate the need for insurance or solve every challenge facing American healthcare. But it does challenge a fundamental assumption—that accessing great primary care has to be complicated.

For Colorado employers preparing for another benefits renewal or open enrollment season, that makes this an important time to ask a simple question:
 
Could we be doing healthcare differently? For a growing number of South Metro Denver businesses, the answer is yes.
 
Learn more about Pinnacle Advanced Primary Care and Direct Primary Care at PinnacleAPC.com.