Doctors find concierge-care practices rewarding
A year after Dr. Russell Neibaur switched his practice to a concierge care model, he feels like he’s in the profession he imagined before entering medical school.
“Before, I was treading water,” Neibaur said. “I (now) feel very upbeat and very rewarded with what I do.”
Neibaur is one of a dozen Las Vegas internal medicine doctors who have signed up with MDVIP, a medical practice business model that sets limits on patient loads, requires patients to pay a $1,500 annual membership fee—per adult—and focuses its care on wellness and prevention.
Neibaur debunked the perception that MDVIP practices are elitist.
“I have patients from every walk of life,” he said, adding his patients include bus drivers and retired civil servants.
“It’s not a practice for the elite and the rich,” he said.
Health Care and Banking: Doctors find concierge-care practices rewarding [Via InBusiness Las Vegas]
From Medical Economics magazine, more on concierge medicine ...
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© 2007
The average insured American spends three to six thousand dollars a year for health insurance. For families it gets into well over a thousand a month. For small businesses that wish to insure their employees, the costs get even higher. All that for a quality of service that is usually sub-standard. The average patient waits 20 minutes for a scheduled appointment (usually not with their primary care physician, who is normally booked out weeks in advance), spends 7 minutes with the doctor and has about 18 seconds to describe what is wrong before being interrupted (Men’s Health study from the January 2008 issue).
To say that an extra $1,500 a year, or $125 a month, is elitist is ridiculous. That is the equivalent of 1 person seeing 6 movies a month with popcorn and a soda; or filling the gas tank 2 and 1/4 times. And for that, the patient gets to actually see their primary care physician while they are ill, and not just for a physical once a year. They can call their doctor from the emergency room where they may sit for hours experiencing things they don’t understand with no one around with the time to help them. They can actually spend time with their primary care physician working on preventative care rather than treating a symptom in 7 minutes so that doctor can push his 30 patients a day through the hoop and still stay in business.
As a patient who has paid well over $100,000 in my life for health insurance to be shuffled through the system, concierge medicine is anything but elitist. The cost to have bare bones insurance with huge deductibles is elitist. I recently injured my knee and was in a situation where I left my job and I could not get insured from anywhere because of my knee. That is elitist. Not being able to get health insurance, and there for health care, because you are pregnant (and pregnancy is a pre-existing condition); that is elitist.
A doctor cutting back on his patient base to see 10 patients a day rather than 35 for a fee of $125 per month…to have the ability to spend 30 minutes with the patient rather than 7…to give the patient the ability to call the doctor anytime they are ill…including weekends…and see the doctor the same day they are sick… and not have to wait in the waiting room…and getting house calls if they are too sick to get out of bed…
It is like paying a pittance extra to get a doctor who will take care of you and help you prevent illness (which will save money in the long run).
It is not elitist. It is the way the system should work, but because it doesn’t doctors and patients need to take it into their own hands.