How does a True North physician visit differ from that with an HMO-covered primary care physician (PCP)?
The most important difference lies in the amount of face-to-face time you have with your doctor. At True North, a new patient evaluation is typically 1 ½ hours with your physician and a follow-up visit is 45-60 minutes. Elsewhere, these same visits last about 10-15 minutes. Because True North doctors spend so much time with their patients, each doctor has only 400-800 patients in his or her practice, whereas a “PCP” covered through an HMO is usually responsible for 1,500-2,000 patients.
