The last time you called your doctor’s office, how long did you have to wait for an answer? How long do you usually have to wait to make an appointment or wait for a prescription? When you get to the office, how much time do you spend in the waiting room and how much time does the doctor spend with you?
Have you received answers to all your questions? How many seconds do you have at the beginning of your appointment to explain your symptoms before you are interrupted? It seems that nurses and doctors are more interested in their computers or their maps than they are for you?
If your experience is similar to most people, your answers to these questions are not very flattering for the medical profession and for the health care system as a whole. Most doctors really do not want their practices to be such, but they do not have much choice. They must have a large volume of patients to make ends meet financially. High volume makes the clinic a very busy place, and most patients do not feel that they receive much attention.
In 1996, in Seattle, a doctor named Howard Moran believed that there should be a better way to do this. He took the initiative to have a lower volumetric practice with very attentive medical care provided as a service to patients in exchange for a retention fee, like many lawyers or accountants. This fee can be supplemented or instead of the regular fees that are exhibited by insurance companies. This concept allows the practice to remain financially solvent while providing better medical care for a small number of patients (usually taking into account the fact that the patient refers to about one-tenth in the traditional traditional practice of primary health care).
Unfortunately, at present, health insurance companies do not pay for this type of service, so this means that patients have to pay it from their own pocket, but if the service is good, it may be worth it. Patients who join this practice are advised to retain their usual insurance, which they will need to visit other specialists, laboratory tests, radiological tests and / or hospital services, if necessary.
Many concierge practitioners offer the same or next day appointments, do not wait for meetings or prescription refills for a long time, direct access to your personal doctor day or night, calls in the house, if necessary, constant care, if they are hospitalized, full physical examinations, screening for audiometry, risk of cardiovascular diseases and cancer screening, more attention to preventive care, unexamined meetings, answers to all questions, family meetings if necessary, coordination of care with specialists, providing ix personal health records on CDs or flash drives, and so on. d., and so on. d.
Depending on the type and quantity of services provided, the charge for a fixed fee can vary widely from one area to the next: from $ 100 to $ 20,000 per year, which probably averages around $ 1500-3000 per year. A few years ago there were only a few hundred doctors, but there are more than 5,000 of them throughout the country. Many of them, but not all, are listed on the main website of the American Academy of Private Physicians - http://www.aapp.org/. Patients can find a doctor in their area on this site.
There have been some disputes related to some of these practices, because some authorities believe that the growth of concierge medicine will lead to the creation of a two-tier medical system in this country - one for the rich and one for the not very rich. In addition, with the current shortage of primary care physicians (PHOs), with an increase in the number of concierge methods, the number of PHOs available for traditional offices will be even smaller, and access to care for patients served by these practices will suffer. On the other hand, more medical students may be interested in primary health care if opportunities in concierge medicine are available to them when they finish their residences.
Some of these methods came under insurance companies, which say that concierge physicians basically provide an insurance plan to their patients without an insurance license. The practice must exist before it is legally and finally structured in such a way as to avoid this criticism.
In general, the concept of concierge medicine is a good alternative to the current unsatisfactory traditional model of medical practice. The fee may seem high for some, but in most cases it is probably not much higher than the cost of a local cable or telephone bill, or about the same as what a family will spend on food in a restaurant once a week.
