Frequently asked questions

It means you pay the practice directly and the practice does not bill an insurance company. You know the price before care is delivered, and there is no claim, no adjudication, and no bill arriving weeks later.

Not in the usual sense. Concierge practices typically charge a large annual retainer and bill your insurance on top of it. Here there is one price: $150 a visit, or $99 a month. Nothing is billed to insurance at all.

Yes, we recommend it. This practice handles primary, urgent, and pain care — roughly the large majority of what you will ever need — but it does not cover hospitalization, surgery, or catastrophic illness. A high-deductible plan pairs unusually well with a practice like this one.

For everything outside this office, yes. Your insurance can still cover medications, imaging, labs, specialists, and hospital care. Compare our cash rates against your copay before you decide — ours is often lower.

Because billing insurance requires volume, and volume requires short visits. Not billing lets this practice stay small enough to care for a limited number of patients properly, and lowers the actual cost of care at the same time.

No. Phil Zhou Medical does not participate in Medicare or Medi-Cal. If you are enrolled in either, please bring it up at your meet & greet so we can explain what that means for you before you sign anything.

Then pay-per-visit at $150 may genuinely be the better deal, and we will tell you so. Membership is worth it when you want someone reachable — for the question at 9pm, the refill you forgot, the symptom you are not sure about.

Yes. Texts come to me, not to an answering service or a portal queue, and I would rather you asked than waited. Scheduling, refills, a photo of a rash, or a question about whether something is worth coming in for are all fair game. Please do not use text for an emergency — call 911 — and keep in mind that ordinary text messaging is not encrypted.

24/7 direct contact with your physician by text or call, routine care and prescription refills handled without an office visit when appropriate, same-day and next-day appointments, longer visits, and wholesale pricing on labs, imaging, and medications.

Hospitalization, emergency care, surgery, obstetric care, and specialist consultations. The cost of medications, labs, and imaging is also not included — you get our wholesale rate on those, not free care.

This practice does not prescribe chronic benzodiazepines, opioids, or ADHD stimulants. Pain management here is function-first: injections, physical therapy coordination, and non-opioid strategies.

Primary care, urgent care, and pain management for [age range — confirm]. That includes diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular risk, thyroid disease, musculoskeletal injury, joint pain, acute illness, and preventive care.

It means symptom management and difficult conversations are the part of medicine I am best at. Day to day that shows up as better pain control, more careful medication management in older patients, and a physician who will actually sit down with your family when something serious happens. It does not mean this is an end-of-life practice — most of what I do here is ordinary primary and urgent care.

Yes. I practiced in patients’ homes for years and still do. House calls are usually scheduled outside regular clinic hours, including evenings and weekends, throughout Upland and the surrounding communities. The fee depends on distance and time and is quoted before the visit is booked.

When it is medically appropriate, yes — after an evaluation and labs, not before. We prescribe FDA-approved medications from licensed pharmacies and do not use compounded GLP-1 products. We will also tell you honestly when a cheaper option, or no medication at all, is the better answer. See the weight management page.

Not as fast as the advertising you have seen, and that is deliberate. Most of the health benefit — blood pressure, blood sugar, lipids, joint pain, sleep — shows up in the first five to ten percent of body weight. A slower loss you can hold onto beats a fast one that rebounds. No physician can responsibly promise you a number by a date.

No, but most people end up preferring it. Weight care needs frequent small adjustments, and at $150 a visit people stop asking questions they should be asking. At $99 a month you just ask.

Because a typical primary care physician carries two to three thousand patients, and that is why appointments are seven minutes long. This practice caps its panel at a fraction of that, which is what makes the access real rather than advertised.

Visit fees and most services are typically eligible. Membership fees are treated differently depending on your plan and current IRS guidance — check with your plan administrator, and confirm with your tax advisor.

Major credit and debit cards, HSA and FSA cards, and ACH transfer. Members keep a card on file.

Cancel at any time with 30 days’ written notice. You are welcome to return later and to switch to pay-per-visit at any point.