Everyone in Marblehead should be paying attention as doctor Jeffrey Gold becomes the first physician in Massachusetts to open a Direct Primary Care practice. This is a model where patients pay the doctor a flat-rate either monthly or annually for a range of services. Dr. Gold’s patients will be paying a monthly, age-based fee that ranges from $30 to $125. This includes an annual physical.

For those interested, Dr. Gold’s practice will open on February 1 in Marblehead at 123 Pleasant Street, Suite 105. On his website, Dr. Gold said, “Over the course of the past couple of years, due to many factors, it became very clear to me that my vision for how I wanted to practice medicine was not coming to fruition; at least not in the dysfunction of the current healthcare system.”

He explained to the AAFP, “I want to be a doctor again. I want to do what I went to school for; I don’t want to be a bean counter. It’s my job to judge the quantity of patients I see.”