FROM DR. KUBINSKI:
The Men’s Center is something I have been thinking about for years, and I am excited to be rolling it out!
About me: I grew up in San Luis Obispo, CA and attended UC San Diego for college. Since 1993 I have lived in the South. I enjoy being a life-long learner and have done much of it on “Tobacco Road” in North Carolina. I have an MS from Wake Forest in Molecular Biology, an MD from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an MBA from Duke. I have been a board-certified urologist in Charleston for 17 years, initially in private practice, and then employed by a local hospital system for 11+ years. My practice has been primarily focused on men’s health issues. I have a particular interest in prostate health and prostate cancer. In fact, I was the first urologist in the Lowcountry to perform a robotic-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy for prostate cancer 15 years ago. The decision to leave my employed position was not easy, but as medicine has evolved I was compelled to move to something that more suits my values. I want to spend time with my patients, understand their needs, and improve their lifestyles in an environment that they can count on.
Why did I start the Men’s Center? It just makes sense. Here’s why:
direct care model
Direct care means we eliminate all of the middlemen involved in medical care who bring no value to the
service provided – insurance companies and administrators for example – and provide direct doctor to
patient care. This means we don’t need two or three extra employees whose only jobs are to deal with
insurance companies by jumping through a number of time-consuming, inefficient hoops in order to be
reimbursed for services. Additionally, we don’t need all of the administrators necessary to manage those
employees and deal with complex coding hurdles that have arisen over the years and make medicine
very inefficient. This frees us up to focus on a straightforward doctor-patient relationship – one that has
been eroding in corporate medicine.
Eliminating insurance companies also allows us to be transparent about prices. Our pricing is simple with
no surprises. You will know how much something costs before you commit instead of finding out after as
is often the case in insurance-driven medicine. You will never get a confusing bill in the mail. In fact, you
will get no bills in the mail ever.
time
What happens when you eliminate the middlemen and administrative burdens? Well, it gives you time.
Time is what patients need, and what they miss. In my last practice, I had a patient booked every 15
minutes. Why? Because the massive administrative burden and shrinking insurance payments made it
necessary to meet overhead. If a patient is booked for 15 minutes, that means on average 7 minutes of
actual face-to-face time. What if a patient has a tough problem or really wants to talk and their visit
takes 40 minutes? It makes everybody else late. If even three of those 30 scheduled patients take 40
minutes – well, you are waiting in the waiting room for hours. Mix in the typical multiple calls from the
hospital, ERs, patients from home etc that the doc has to field in a workday and you have a day that
doesn’t make patients or the doctor happy. In corporate medicine, we are set up to fail.
At The Men’s Center, new patients are booked in one hour time slots, and return patients are booked
for at least 30 minutes. We rarely have anybody in the waiting room for more than 5 minutes. We
literally almost never run behind schedule. We respect your time and give you ours.
Simplicity and time affect the office environment. Have you found conventional office staff to be
grumpy? I have. But of course they are. Their jobs are often unwinnable. Too many patients crammed in
too little time. Fielding lots of complaints with very little that can be done to appease them. They are set
up to fail. Burnout is high. Turnover is high. We aim to change ALL of that.
availability
One of the hardest things to do in corporate medicine is juggle office visits, surgery, and patient calls. As
patients often note, the thing that really suffers is availability by phone. Have you noticed how hard it is
to get ahold of anybody who can help by phone? Our model simplifies this. We have one phone, no
transfers, no phone menus, and the time to answer your questions. We pride ourselves on availability.
make a real impact on the lifestyles of men
The easiest way to provide care in a 15 minute visit is to look at numbers on labs and write a
prescription. What takes time is actually discussing more subtle and multifactorial lifestyle issues, and looking at those numbers in the context of how you feel and how happy you are with your daily
performance. Our goal at The Men’s Center is not only to address lifespan but also healthspan – the quality
of those years. Vitality. Activity. Productivity. Fulfilling sex lives and relationships. Things that cannot be
adequately discussed in 7 minutes.
an actual urologist
Men’s Health clinics should have a urologist. Issues such as erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, low testosterone, enlarged prostate, & prostate cancer are very intertwined and all fall directly within the training scope of a urologist. No other physicians are formally trained to treat all of these conditions.
not your regular doctor's office
Let’s face it. You might not typically look forward to a urology appointment. I want to change that and have created an environment that I think patients will really look forward to.
And one final reason,
since the men's center is about the important things in life:
“I would really like to be more involved in my kids’ lives. This was becoming more difficult under the conventional medicine model.”
-Dr. K
not getting what you need from corporate medicine?
it's time for a change.
The men's center is that change.
owned and operated by a board-certified urologist and staffed by men who listen.
