As a child, Dr. Melissa Rau remembers her mother fainting in the emergency room when Dr. Rau required stitches at three years old. When her brother broke his arm, all her mother could do was scream. "It's a running joke that I came out of that household, [raised by] the most squeamish person on earth," Dr. Rau laughs. With no medical connections in her family and a mother that isn't exactly a big fan of blood, a career in medicine wasn't what anyone expected."It really was just an interest in science and getting to talk with people and having a different challenge every day that led me into medicine," she says.
As she navigated medical school at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine in Dayton and her residency in family medicine at UPMC St. Margaret's Hospital in Pittsburgh, it was her love for people–both the squeamish and the steady–and helping them understand their health that ultimately led her to practice family medicine. "I wanted to have the opportunity to have relationships and get to know people while trying to keep them healthy," Dr. Rau explains. "[I also wanted] to see multiple generations of families and be their first go-to for anything. In a lot of ways, I learned that family medicine is sometimes like being a life coach to help people navigate the health system and stay healthy. I like doing that."
But what we want on paper doesn't always translate to the career for which you've trained, unfortunately. The traditional healthcare system cares about one thing over all others: profits. Efforts to make more money from insurance companies and hospital systems mean more patients being seen by fewer doctors, more paperwork, more billing code confusion and more stress. When Covid-19 hit hard in 2020, an already taxed system began to see an influx of patients as providers and systems became even more overloaded. Those on the ground floor felt the effects of burnout both immediately and in the years to follow.
Ultimately, it was the pandemic that led her to PeopleOne Health. As Covid became part of the day-to-day and things returned to a new normal, it was clear that patients, their needs and the hospital system had irrevocably changed. "Through Covid, we had so much staff turnover and [after the dust settled] we were not able to hire staff back, whether it was just that people were tired of working in medicine during the pandemic or that we were paying them poorly," Dr. Rau explains.
And it wasn't just the office staff that felt overwhelmed. Patients, too, were dealing with new levels of stress and anxiety, plus new fears of disease. "At every appointment, there was so much more on everybody's plate–there was anxiety, depression, stress and childcare worries. Plus, health conditions that had been ailing patients for two years but left untreated because they didn't want to come into a doctor's office," she says. "Every visit just became so much more complicated and there was less staff to help out and it just piled up. I could see the writing on the wall. It was a never-ending battle and I was burnt out."
Worried that the new stress was going to push her out of her work in medicine, when Dr. Rau sat down for her contract renewal for 2022, she knew it was time for a change. When a LinkedIn advertisement led Dr. Rau to a PeopleOne Health job listing, she was intrigued, to say the least. "I just kept saying, 'This is too good to be true. This isn't real. This is every person's dream that's looking to get out of traditional medicine,'" she laughs.
So what makes the model so different that it's hard to believe? According to Dr. Rau, the traditional healthcare system has two major issues: access to resources and cost. In previous hospitals, Dr. Rau noticed a pattern of patients needing help outside of what a primary care physician could provide, but not taking the steps to get that help. "People have gone through so much during the pandemic. I could feel the stresses of my patients, but I didn't always have the social work and mental health resources to help them. I would tell patients that they need to see a psychiatrist but then they wouldn't be able to get in for four months," she shares. In addition to the availability of resources, added costs hold many patients back from receiving adequate care. "I have tons of patients who won't do testing, won't do physical therapy, won't go to therapy because their deductibles are too high," she elaborates.
Instead of creating a wall, PeopleOne Health opens a door. Several doors, as a matter of fact. With everything from social work and mental health to access to nutritionists and unlimited regular primary care visits without a copay covered, Dr. Rau feels confident knowing her patients are getting the well-rounded care they need to thrive. It's knowing that when she recommends a medication, the PeopleOne Health pharmacy will fill it without a representative of the insurance company disputing its necessity. It's being able to recommend a psychiatrist or social worker and knowing her patient will be able to get care quickly without ending up on a months-long waitlist. It's being able to refer a patient with diabetes directly to a nutritionist to help them get off medication. PeopleOne Health's model offers care that extends beyond Dr. Rau's office walls, and that alone makes her excited for the future.
With a supportive team at every office and without health insurance companies or hospital systems calling the shots, PeopleOne Health allows providers to get back to doing what they're trained to do: care for patients and improve health outcomes.
"In my old job, I felt trapped. It was the same thing, day in and day out," Dr. Rau says. "Here at PeopleOne Health, there's so much opportunity. If there's something that's not working, we have the opportunity to change it. Ultimately my vision is that PeopleOne Health has such a presence that we don't have to explain the model. I want us to be the standard of care, not the exception."