True North Direct Primary Care puts new face on healthcare

by Nathan Boddy

Dr. Johanna Dreiling, who has practiced family medicine in the Bitterroot Valley since 2010, will step into an exciting new world of serving patients in 2025, as she joins True North Direct Primary Care (DPC) in Hamilton.

“I’m really looking forward to this work,” Dreiling said about her new practice, adding that the model can be seen as a logical extension of a healthy lifestyle. “There is so much that is admirable about [the DPC] system, and I truly believe that it will enable me to focus on the most important part of healthcare, the patient.”

Dr. Robert Hart, who started True North DPC in late 2022, along with Wendy Hansen, RN, says that Dreiling’s decision to join the practice couldn’t have come at a better time. True North, which has recently added new services, occupies a building that was constructed with the aim of eventually housing several providers, and sits adjacent to other health-oriented businesses. Along with Stephanie Angert, NP-C, who joined the practice in early 2024, Hart says that he and Hansen had been considering what the next expansion would look like. 

“Dr. Dreiling has always been on our top-priority list, if she were ever interested,” said Hart, who worked with Dreiling for several years before founding True North. “She’s an incredibly talented doctor with impeccable bedside manner and empathy toward her patients.”

Direct Primary Care is a system of medical practice wherein patients become members of the DPC via an annual, paid subscription to the service. The subscription allows members greater access to their providers, often at costs far less than what many people see in annual co-pays and out-of-pocket expenses for traditional healthcare.

Dr. Hart asserts that the DPC model of medicine has demonstrable benefits for its members.

“The reality is that we can provide unlimited, high quality, easily accessible primary care for about 10 percent the cost of insurance,” said Hart.

Although the DPC model may not replace someone’s need for catastrophic insurance coverage, it can provide access to commonly needed services such as annual wellness and preventative exams, management of chronic medical conditions and even minor procedures, on a nearly unlimited basis. This stands in sharp contrast to the often difficult process for securing appointments that many patients experience with the traditional healthcare model. And, according to Hart and Hansen, that improved access means that DPC members enjoy fewer ER visits, fewer hospitalizations and fewer surgeries because their healthcare providers are able to catch problems and intervene before they become catastrophic medical expenses.

“Right now, medical debt is the number one risk for individual bankruptcy in America,” Hart said, adding, “It’s a lie that that good health care has to be expensive.”

Dr. Hart is adamant that healthcare in the United States has become what he calls, an “industrial health complex,” and that it is heavily controlled by insurance and big pharmaceutical companies. That frustration is clearly shared by many Americans, and an extreme version was on display following the recent assassination of United HealthCare CEO, Brian Thompson, as many people nationwide expressed a notable lack of sympathy, some even celebrating the event. In a New York Times opinion piece in the weeks following the assassination, former Vice President of Communications for Cigna health insurance, Wendell Potter, wrote that an estimated 100 million Americans are in medical debt, the majority of whom do have health insurance. His assertion was that, far too often, the insurance industry seems to be standing in the way of healthcare, and even, “puts profit above patients.”

The DPC model, according to Dr. Hart, can avoid that unfortunate dynamic.

“We cut the middleman out of the way,” said Hart. “Patient autonomy is paramount, and they are in control of their own health care at all times. What we do is remove the huge administrative burden that sits between a doctor and their patient, and we put the patient back in charge of their health care.”

While patients still have the option to run a variety of services, other than their membership fee, through their insurance if they so choose, Hart says that those interactions represent only 30% of the administrative burden that exists in traditional healthcare models.

“So, 70% of the burden is gone,” said Hart. “We can get things turned around really quick. So if someone sends me an order today, it’s signed and in the fax machine on the same day. We’re much more responsive, much more efficient, much more flexible.”

As a further nod to health and well-being, True North also offers a separate service known as Transformative Health. This program combines healthcare with physical therapy, behavioral health and physical conditioning, in order to address chronic health conditions, weight loss and even prevention of chronic disease. 

“Chronic disease groups a number of health problems together that are associated with unhealthy lifestyle,” said Hart. “Obesity, hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart disease, and many cancers are related to unhealthy lifestyles.” He went on to explain that chronic disease is currently the most prevalent healthcare issue in the United States and growing exponentially.

“It’s a pandemic,” he said, “and right now we are spending three out of every four dollars in healthcare on chronic disease. Ninety-nine out of 100 Medicare dollars is spent on chronic disease. And, if you’re a kid in the United States right now, you have a one-in-two to one-in-three chance of developing diabetes. It’s totally unacceptable.”

Transformative Health, according to Hart, treats the underlying causes by teaching people how to eat, exercise and live a healthy lifestyle through a collaborative, multidisciplinary approach. When it is followed, Hart says, their success rate is 100%.

True North DPC also reports that it has expanded its services to include IV Nutrition Therapy and Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy (BHRT). Hart says that the BHRT, which uses the exact molecular structures made by the human body rather than synthetic hormones, has been extraordinarily successful for people suffering from a variety of conditions related to hormone loss as one gets older, such as chronic fatigue, joint aches, loss of libido and sleep problems.

“Being able to provide a safe alternative that treats those symptoms and gives people back the way they felt when they were young and healthy has been really rewarding and beneficial to see,” said Hart.

True North DPC is located in their new building at 482 Old Corvallis Road. More information about their programs, services and providers can be found on their website at: https://truenorthdpc.health/.

Editor’s Note: Reporter Nathan Boddy is married to Dr. Johanna Dreiling.