Bryan R. Fine, MD, MPH has been a practicing physician for nearly twenty years, originally in Washington, DC where he trained and the last twelve of which have been spent based in Norfolk, Virginia. He arrived in Hampton Roads in 2008 to start the pediatric inpatient hospitalist program at CHKD, which thrived and grew under his leadership, and during that time was also an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at EVMS working closely with students and residents.
Dr Fine has long prioritized patient-centered care and equitable access, as well as healthcare financing, and so left academic medicine in 2018 to pursue his entrepreneurial visions and focus on Percentric, his direct-to-business private medical practice and Gnymble, the software communication platform he’s built to facilitate easy-access for patients into the healthcare space.
For the past several years – well before Covid-19 hit – Dr. Fine has been a pioneer in business-based healthcare and has worked with several local businesses to provide no cost, easy-access, basic healthcare to employees. Currently, he is recognized as a leading Covid-19 local voice and has been sought out by news agencies (ie: WAVY-10, WTKR-3) and trade groups (ie: SHRM, EO) to help educate and reassure.
Percentric was born in 2016 primarily as a consulting firm, built on Dr. Fine’s background in health policy and finance. Our original mission was to help businesses better manage healthcare costs by bringing an insurance-savvy, business-minded clinical voice into their boardroom.
Our first client was Taste Unlimited and our singular goal was to help them understand health insurance better and to offer them a ‘friend in the room’ when meeting with brokers. In the first year, we saved Taste 30% on health insurance, just by asking questions that incorporated actual clinical experience into benefits planning. We’re comfortable suggesting that their broker at the time...didn’t love us. Those savings have been sustained year-over-year, and - as of this date - their costs are still lower in real dollars (not adjusted) then what they were facing five years ago. You might think that the lower healthcare costs came at the expense of employee satisfaction. Quite the contrary. Very quickly, Taste employees - blue and white collar - began asking clinicalquestions when Dr. Fine was around. Basic refill requests, minor urgent issues. This naturally evolved to our providing them more formal doctor-by-text services and some onsite screening and basic clinics.
We dubbed this ‘Convenient Care - Not Urgent, Not Primary'. For an employee population that often can’t afford even the most inexpensive health insurance premiums, or who are on high deductible plans without concomitant savings, this was widely appreciated. We were able to deliver concierge-for-all by trusting that people are inherently good, smart and respectful. We kept people at work, instead of them losing a half-day to a doctor appointment and losing a half-day of much needed wages. Productivity improved. We were helping.
Dr. Fine moved to Percentric full-time in 2018. Since then, one of our most engaged clients is Bauer Compressors - a local manufacturing firm. For more than two years, we’ve provided them onsite clinics weekly, doctor-by-text, and executive-level health insurance consulting. We’re their fractional Chief Medical Officer, and in that role have advised them on the potential migration to self-insured status while also directly engaging nearly 200 of their 250 or so employees with actual healthcare. Our ability to save employees time, hassle and money has been demonstrated repeatedly and our presence allows C-suites to make different choices in health benefits design as they try to reign in out-of-control healthcare costs. Our clients, we’re happy to say, see us as part of their team.