Dr. Kamaljit Kaur: Revolutionizing Healthcare with Concierge Primary Care at KKAUR MD

Ever found yourself yearning for healthcare that feels less like a transaction and more like a partnership? Dr. Kamaljit Kaur joins us to unravel the fabric of a personalized medical revolution on Local Living. As the founder of KKAUR MD, Dr. Kaur is advocating for a healthcare journey that defies traditional insurance models, opting instead for a membership-based approach to ensure each patient is more than just a number. We cover ground on the intrinsic value of extended consultations and the luxury of direct physician access, painting a picture of a future where the patient-doctor dynamic is intimately redefined. 

By maintaining a cap on her patient list, Dr. Kaur pledges a caliber of attentiveness that turns the tables on conventional medical experiences. For those intrigued by the prospect of a healthcare experience tailor-made to fit your life, Dr. Kaur offers a bridge to the exceptional with an open invitation for a complimentary consultation.

www.kkaurmd.com
954-947-0327

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome, welcome everyone, to Local Living, a community podcast for Palm Beach to Parkland. I'm David Conway, your host for episode 23 today. You know healthcare is challenging. I talk to various colleagues and friends. I ask them who their primary care physician is and I can tell you half of them don't even know. Fortunately, there is a shift happening towards more personalized healthcare and my guest today is at the forefront of that trend. We have Dr Kamaljeet Kaur. She is the founder of KKAUR MD concierge primary care Doctor. Welcome to Local Living.

Speaker 2: 0:57

Hi, good morning David. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1: 1:00

My pleasure. I was excited about speaking with you today because I can tell you this is something that my wife and I have been discussing lately, and we are also thinking about taking a turn, a shift towards what you're offering. Can you tell us a little bit more about your business, a little bit more about KCORMD Concierge Primary Care?

Speaker 2: 1:28

Yes, absolutely so. Kcormd is a passion project. I will start out by saying it's a grassroots sort of movement. I say sort of because there are many of us physicians who are transitioning to this, so I'm not the first can't take the credit. But it is a membership-based primary care practice led by me. I am a double board certified physician and I'm very, very passionate about what I do. We are different from most other practices in that we are membership-based. So, just like your gym or your country club, we don't contract with insurance companies. So that means that I can provide you longer appointment times, more personalized care, more direct access and really a better primary care experience, because I'm not shackled by the limitations and restrictions that a lot of insurance companies do impose upon us, unfortunately.

Speaker 1: 2:18

So I know when I meet with a doc I go in for a checkup. Usually I seem to end up with the PA for a little bit and I might say hello to the doctor. I'm usually in and out in 10 or 15 minutes. Could you describe a little bit more about what an initial consultation with you might be like?

Speaker 2: 2:39

Sure. So, since we are membership-based, we do welcome the patients and I say patients, but I mean everybody, of course to come in. And the first thing I would want my patients to do is to see the office, to meet with me, to sit down and really talk about what their healthcare goals are and see how we can help meet them, because membership medicine isn't for everybody. It's for those individuals who are really vested in their healthcare, whether they are young and healthy and looking to stay healthy or, unfortunately, have a couple of chronic conditions and just need somebody to really be their advocate or their quarterback. That's what we're here to do. That initial consultation generally goes like that, but the visits in general are anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes.

Speaker 2: 3:26

I don't like to practice rush rush medicine. I like to actually get to know my patients like old fashioned primary care physicians did. You know, I grew up wanting to be a family doc, so you know a family doc, when you're sick or you're not feeling well, you pick up the phone, you text them and you say, hey, doc, I've got this going on, what should we do? Or somebody to really guide you in your healthcare journey. And staying healthy, maintaining your wellbeing, aging gracefully. Those are all important things. My patients also do have that direct access to me, so if they need me they just pick up the phone, call my cell phone. They can send me a text or email me. When they come into my office, it is just them and I. I don't want to have and I don't have a waiting room full of people. You are generally the only person to come in, unless you choose to bring a family member with you, and it's just a really more personalized experience. I think that's the best way I could put it.

Speaker 1: 4:19

So can you tell us a little bit more about your background? I mean, I know you're highly credentialed, but was there a moment where you knew you wanted to take the shift and move in this direction?

Speaker 2: 4:34

Yeah, so I have spent the last almost 12 years really cultivating my passion for caring for others. It's very cheesy and I know it might be cliche, but I've known since I was a child that this is what I wanted to do. And then I knew I wanted to have more training in primary care and be a primary care physician. That is a little bit of a personal journey. I lost my father in the middle of med school and I feel that if he had had a good primary care physician a lot of things could have been prevented and he could have been here with us. So that's pretty much where my passions ignited for primary care.

Speaker 2: 5:10

After residency I was lucky enough to land a nice position at the Cleveland Clinic right here in Parkland. I practiced there for about four years and it was great. It was a great organization. It is a great organization.

Speaker 2: 5:23

Unfortunately, the state of primary care most anywhere you go in the United States now is rush rush medicine and I just got tired of practicing that. I was seeing 20, 30 patients a day, spending maybe five to seven minutes with each patient, giving them as best care as I humanly possible could like humanly possible could, but just wasn't enough. I would often go home thinking to myself oh no, if I had extra five minutes I could have told Mrs Smith that you know this is what you really need to do. Or, oh geez, did I send in that prescription? And a lot of those things started to happen. And that's when I knew this is not the type of medicine I wanted to practice, not the type of doctor I wanted to be. So, over the years, just really trying to figure out what is what would make me happy professionally and what I could do in the best interest of my patients, that's what's led me to this journey and where I am today.

Speaker 1: 6:17

Doctor. Nothing cheesy about a young person growing up wanting to be a doctor. Quite frankly, it's aspirational. And can you tell us when people first hear about concierge medicine, are there any myths or misconceptions your patients may have coming in?

Speaker 2: 6:40

Yes, absolutely so. Being in South Florida, most of us are familiar with concierge medicine. There's many primary care practices and even specialty practices that do practice in this model many primary care practices and even specialty practices that do practice in this model. What makes us different, though, from those practices is that we don't bill insurance at all, so I am not obligated by contracts to Cigna or United or Avmed to practice a certain way or to make sure I'm doing certain things that may be really good on paper but might not be in the best interest of my patient. I don't want to say that insurance is all bad. It's not. It's very important for catastrophic care, but it's not necessary to get good primary care anymore.

Speaker 2: 7:26

At least A lot of the concierge practices that most people are familiar with do charge that annual retainer or that monthly retainer, but then they still charge your insurance, so they're kind of billing you from both ends, I guess for lack of a better word, whereas we are truly like a gym or your country club membership, where you pay a monthly fee or an annual fee and that's pretty much all you pay me I'm not talking to you about copays when you come in.

Speaker 1: 7:59

I'm not talking to you about your deductible, it's just a really straightforward relationship. Now, do you offer the patients any guidance? Let's say I need a prescription, I'm paying. Do I need to be covered for that, or how does that work?

Speaker 2: 8:06

Yes, absolutely. So. Just as I was saying, insurance isn't all bad because it does cover a majority, a good majority, of our healthcare items. So if you come in saying insurance isn't all bad because it does cover a good majority of our health care items, so if you come in to see me, you're not paying me directly for my services. I do provide an insurance invoice so that you can submit to your insurance provider and maybe they'll reimburse you, depending on your plan. So that's for my services.

Speaker 2: 8:29

But say you come in and you need antibiotics or you need to get some blood work done, we do do the blood work here in our office. We don't charge a convenience fee for that. That's included in your membership and you have the choice of either paying us a low cash price for the uh, the labs, or we can send them off and have a lab core request wherever you choose to go, bill your insurance from that end. So you can certainly still use your insurance for blood work, for medications, if you need to see a specialist or get some testing done or, god forbid, you have to go to the emergency room or have surgery.

Speaker 1: 9:03

Well, if I can avoid a trip to one of those places, I think I will.

Speaker 2: 9:09

And that's what we truly try to help you do.

Speaker 1: 9:12

You take it. No, I know those people are doing a service work in there and everybody's working hard, but as the consumer or the patient, I think I'd rather wait and get my tires changed. It is very frustrating. So I know you're a doctor. You studied hard for years. I know you worked diligently when you had your residency nonstop. And now you're shifting and you're building a business on top of that. Do you get time to take a break ever? And if you do, what do you like to do for fun?

Speaker 2: 9:54

So you're very right in alluding that I have very little time for myself and for just fun. I guess Not that I'm not having fun now. This has been a lifelong dream, so I am happier than I've ever been, even in the most stressful of days, of owning a business, um, but when I do get that free time and I have to I have to give credit to my husband, because he is very, very good with making sure that I I have a shutdown time at night, after which that's it. It's family time. We're not doing any more work, um. And weekends we love to travel. When we can, we like to spend time with our loved ones. Um, honestly, when I get a break, I sometimes just like to sit down with a cup of coffee and maybe read. It's it's rare that I get to do that, because I have so much going on in my brain it's hard to shut it off and read for not work, but that's, it's fun when I get to.

Speaker 1: 10:50

That's a challenge for a lot of us these days.

Speaker 2: 10:53

Yeah. So that's important because we give a lot of importance to our work life in this country. And that has really become detrimental to our health mental and physical. So I really wish more people knew the importance of just you know having that shut off time you need to give your body and your mind rest and relaxation.

Speaker 1: 11:12

You know, I was going to ask for you to share with the listeners, maybe about a hardship or a life challenge that you rose above and you draw upon now, maybe to even help you be more successful or better in what you do. You mentioned your father. You mentioned his passing having some influence on what you're doing now. Could you expand a little bit more on that?

Speaker 2: 11:50

could you expand a little bit more on that? Yeah, so I am an only child and my parents are both wonderful, hardworking, loving people and my father was my best friend, my mentor, I mean all the adjectives. He was pretty much everything, and I had a great relationship with my mom too, but I was certainly a daddy's girl. He started to get sick in my second year of medical school and at the time you know well, I'm not going to generalize this, but men tend to minimize their symptoms and you know they're, they're seen as the rock of the family and they want to maintain that, that personality of being the rock of the family. So they don't want to show vulnerability and I think part of that is why he didn't really tell my mom and I that he wasn't feeling well. For a while we started to get testing done, see certain doctors and, long story short, unfortunately when he was diagnosed he was already in stage four cancer and then we lost him a few weeks later and I was I was in the second year of medical school, it was a month before my board exams. It was the last thing I thought was ever going to happen, cause you know your dad's invincible I mean, come on like nothing can happen to your dad, right? So it was a lot. It was a lot.

Speaker 2: 12:57

I had to decide whether I even wanted to go back to medical school because I had this huge guilt of why didn't I recognize what was going on with my dad? I should have known. I mean, in retrospect, I knew nothing. I was only in my second year and you know I was not expertised enough to know what was going on. And then I had to handle our family business, my grieving mom. So, yeah, I would say that that is definitely the biggest hardship I faced, and with the support of my family and friends because without them I don't know where I'd be I overcame it and it really it heightens my threshold for stress and I think that's a very, very helpful personality trait to have nowadays, especially with this business. But even now I am still guided by him, my morals, my principles, my business ethic. He was an entrepreneur himself and this is what he saw for me, and so I'm kind of pursuing both our dreams.

Speaker 1: 13:56

That's amazing. Thank you for sharing that and, doctor, I know that this is a passion project for you, as you stated. Can you share something with our listeners that you want them to know about? Kcore MD.

Speaker 2: 14:15

Yeah, I think the biggest thing I wish people knew, because I know when they hear about my practice they may think to themselves oh, just another primary care doctor or just another primary care office. You know, and I wish I could convey into words my passion so people would see or read or hear that I truly, truly love what I do, that I truly, truly love what I do. We all know there are better ways, especially nowadays. There are better ways to make money, so that is not my driving force.

Speaker 2: 14:44

It's a nice, you know, it's a nice thing to have happen when you're pursuing your passion, but I am truly doing this because I love it and I think that having good primary care is lacking nowadays and, as I mentioned earlier, you know, if we had it in our family, I think it would be different. If I can help or save just one other family from losing a loved one, I think that would be enough for me. I wake up and I feel blessed to be able to do this every day and really I think that's what people knew that good primary care is so important to have, not just when you're sick, but to help you stay healthy and age healthy and be there for your friends and family.

Speaker 1: 15:27

So, doctor, I know that you are located right on the border, really, of Parkland and Coral Springs. How can our listeners reach you if they want to reach out and maybe set up an initial consultation?

Speaker 2: 15:40

Sure, so our initial consultation is complimentary. I welcome everybody to come in and just have a candid conversation and see if they're comfortable. If patients or if you guys would like to do that, you're more than welcome to schedule conveniently. On our website at wwwkcoremdcom, you can also call or text our office phone number. It's 954-947-0327. If you text, that goes directly to me, and then there's an email as well that you can reach out to. It's welcome. At kcoremdcom and any of those methods you choose to use, you will be connected with either myself or my medical assistant, christina. She's lovely, she's very personable. You guys will love her as well. I do want to note, though, that I'm only taking 300 patients. Average primary care physicians take anywhere from 1,500 to 2,500 patients, so you can see why that personalized care is kind of lost, and I think just taking on a couple hundred is going to help me maintain that ability for my patients.

Speaker 1: 16:43

And just a little side note. So KCORMDcom. For our listeners that's spelled K-K-A-U-R-M-Dcom. Is that right, doctor?

Speaker 2: 16:55

That's correct.

Speaker 1: 16:56

Well, listen, I appreciate you coming on today. You've been a great guest. Your passion comes through and I appreciate you sharing with us. Doctor, you've been a great guest and folks, I'm David Conway, your host for Local Living. Thank you for joining us today and we'll see you next time.