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Saturday Surgery: $150

My primary care physician has a cash-only medical practice, and he is paid by the hour for whatever he does – be it a phone call, email, office visit, house call, or outpatient surgical procedure. He doesn’t charge higher prices for procedure complexity – that’s factored into the time it takes to complete the procedure. It’s a wonderful model for those of us who’ve chosen high deductible health insurance plans, and pay cash for primary care services. My husband and I save thousands of dollars/year with our plan, and spend a few hundred of that savings to cover our primary care needs. We also have our family physician available to us 24-7 via phone/email, and can generally see him for an in-person visit within hours of a request for one.

Yesterday was a perfect example of the incredible convenience of this model of care – I called Dr. Dappen at 10:30am and asked if we could come in to have a sebaceous cyst removed from my husband’s back. Dr. Dappen said he’d be happy to see us at 11:30am that day, so we hopped in a car and were finished with the procedure by 12:00. I even had fun taking photos for the blog (see below)…

Cost of the procedure: (surgery plus supplies): $150

Days spent waiting for an appointment: 0

Time spent in a waiting room: 0 minutes

Convenience of having a cash-only family physician: priceless

*For more information, check out: Doctokr Family Medicine, Vienna, Virginia*

Pearly appearance of small sebaceous cyst

Pearly appearance of small sebaceous cyst

Excision of sebaceous cyst

Excision of sebaceous cyst

Wound closure with simple sutures

Wound closure with simple sutures

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