01/15/2026
The Fast Food of Healthcare
This isn’t a 10-second soundbite, and it’s well worth the 15 minutes it takes to listen to the entire talk.
Dr. Nina Maouelainin discusses what happens when patients don’t have a physician advocate on their side: a primary care doctor who knows them and is truly there for them. When it’s hard to get in with a primary care doctor, a quick urgent care visit can seem like the easiest solution.
Dr. Maouelainin explains this using a familiar analogy: urgent care is like going through the drive-through when you’re hungry and short on time. There’s absolutely a place for that. But when you find yourself going through the drive-through over and over, it’s often a sign of a bigger problem.
Working with a primary care doctor, on the other hand, is more like going to a sit-down restaurant. It’s a place where you can slow down, talk, build trust, dig into the details of your health, share ideas, and come up with a thoughtful plan together.
Unfortunately, in the traditional insurance model, most primary care doctors are only able to spend about 7 minutes face-to-face with each patient on average. That’s clearly not the sit-down experience we’re aiming for (you might get to wolf down a piece of the free bread if you’re lucky).
In today’s healthcare landscape, direct primary care doctors are uniquely positioned to offer the time and attention that a nourishing, complex sit-down meal requires. It’s not the only solution to our healthcare challenges, but it is one way to make sure someone is at your table when you need it most.
Urgent care has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, but at what cost? Using her background as a pulmonologist, Nina Maouelainin explains how the u...
