About Birmingham Direct Primary Care Proudly serving Greater Birmingham area including Over the mountain (Mountain Brook, Homewood, Vestavia, and Hoover), Alabaster, Pelham, Calera, and the surrounding areas.

No, we don’t take insurance.

We spare you the hassle of insurance and deal directly with you. Most importantly, this allows Dr. Sahinoglu to spend more time with you and not waste any time on insurance coding, insurance paperwork or other secretarial work physicians are unnecessarily burdened with. This also allows all costs of care to be transparent, saves you money, eliminates waiting, and allows direct access to the doctor.

We strongly encourage everybody to maintain at least a catastrophic insurance plan, a major medical plan, or a health-share plan to cover products, services, and procedures not offered at Birmingham Direct Primary Care.  You can still use your insurance on specialist or hospital visits.  

If you don’t have any insurance but are interested in getting a catastrophic insurance or health-share plan, we would be happy to get you in touch with some local insurance experts we know.

1. Good insurance does not always mean access to good health care.

   Direct Primary Care offers something insurance alone cannot: time, access, and a real relationship with your physician. Our patients enjoy unrushed appointments, longer visits, and the ability to have all their questions answered in one sitting. Many issues such as medication refills, follow‑up questions, or minor concerns, can be handled conveniently by text, email, or a simple phone call, without requiring an office visit. Many issues such as medication refills, follow up questions, and minor concerns can be handled conveniently by text, phone, or email, saving you unnecessary trips to the office.

   You also gain increased availability, same‑ or next‑day appointments, and a doctor who knows you personally rather than as a name on a chart. It’s care designed around you, not around insurance requirements.

    

2. From a financial standpoint, it’s about reducing your out‑of‑pocket costs.

   Even with insurance, most patients still pay copays, coinsurance, and deductibles—costs that often exceed our monthly membership fee. In fact, the average annual deductible is typically much higher than a full year of membership at Birmingham DPC. And that’s before factoring in the significant savings on medications and lab work that members receive.

We provide many prescriptions and labs at deeply discounted wholesale rates.

Many patients (even those with insurance) tell us the savings on their medication and lab work is more than their monthly membership fee.

And because we dispense medication and draw blood in our office, you save the one thing more valuable than money: time. No more standing in long lines at the pharmacy, or in waiting rooms at the lab.

We have contracts with select imaging centers that provide greatly reduced self-pay rates. Examples of these rates include an X-ray for $50, Mammogram for $125, CT for $225, MRI for $450 (including the radiologist reading).

If you have insurance, you can opt to use it for imaging procedures. But if you have a high deductible, it’s usually more affordable to skip insurance and pay directly at our discounted rate.

When you need specialist attention, we’ll work with them and coordinate every aspect of your care. Our membership fee covers any and all interactions between Dr. Sahinoglu and your specialist team(s).


If you don’t have insurance to cover specialist fees, we can usually negotiate affordable direct-pay rates so you can be seen by the doctors you need.


One side note: because our model enables us to spend so much more time with you, we may be able to diagnose and treat conditions without the need for specialist care. Contact our office for more details.

In many cases, patients don’t need to visit our office. Without insurance mandating visits for payment, patients can often interface with Dr. Sahinoglu via phone, text message, email, or video conference.


And for the times when it’s necessary for a physical visit, the drive across town will often be much less than you’d spend in a traditional clinic’s waiting room.

Sick patient calls Dr. Sahinoglu. Patient is evaluated in the same day, administered shot and dispensed medication.
Had the patient gone to an urgent care facility, the cost would have been $125-175. (Not to mention the hours saved from not waiting around to be seen by a doctor or a nurse practitioner who has never seen that patient before).


Patient X paid $0.03 per pill for blood pressure and acid reflux medication. A thirty day supply of each totaled less than $2 – which was a $73 savings over what they paid before.


Patient Y paid only $17 for lab work that had previously cost hundreds of dollars after insurance.

The scope and access of what we offer has many powerful results:

• Higher productivity.
• Healthier employees.
• Fewer missed work days.
• Higher employee satisfaction.
• Overall lower healthcare claims.
• Lower worker’s comp claims.
• Lower ER visits & hospitalizations.

For cost for small businesses, check out our DPC for employers page by clicking menu then selecting DPC for employers

By enrolling their employees in Birmingham Direct Primary Care and setting up a level-funded insurance plan around it, small businesses can save up to 30%-60% on cost of healthcare coverage.  We would be happy to get you in touch with an experienced health benefit advisor who can assist you with this.