The concierge medical practice model is not for everyone. People have to decide what is important in regards to their time and their healthcare. The person that has been attracted to my practice is the one who is frustrated with the typical medical office of long waits, hurried visits and phone calls that do not seem to get returned.

My practice also offers ancillary services such as visits with a Registered Dietitian, personal fitness trainers, and massage therapist – all for less than the typical concierge fee charged by other physicians in this area. In fact, my office is the only one in Southwest Florida providing this comprehensive care as part of the concierge fee.

We offer a choice for the client on when and where they can receive his/her medical care – my office or their home/office. We can also provide laboratory services in the office as well that would not be available in a house call situation. It is all about what the client needs.

Concierge medicine is not going to replace the typical practice model of medicine, but instead provides the public another choice in their medical care.

Andrew Oakes-Lottridge, MD
Personalized Health Care, Inc.
(239)694-6246
http://www.DrAndy.us

How convenient. These are the things that I have been blogging about for two months.

Give the primary care doc the time to cogitate and you will watch a shifting of the cost curve downward that will trickle through out the whole system Part A, Part B and Part D

The Medicare National Bank’s idea of cost control is to cut reimbursement. The only response a physician has is to increase volume to remain revenue neutral. When you spend less time with the patient, you get what you pay for. More referrals, more tests, more hospital admissions. More expensive health care.

To hear this from a doc who is actually practicing retainer medicine is so comforting to know that my ideas and reflections are not just theories but have applicable real world effects.

In a previous blog entry “My 125 billion dollar experiment” I proposed a dollar for dollar tax credit to every man woman and child of $30 a month, or $360 a year to be used towards the purchase of primary care services. My idea was a market decided “access”/retainer fee. In return, primary care gets out of the insurance business, forever. They bill the patient the equivalent of a copay ($30-50) for an office visit, cash. Insurance in primary care is no longer a factor.

I figured a primary care doc with a panel of 1000 patients (much smaller than todays panels), could see every patient 4 times a year at an average visit length of $27 minutes, take 6 weeks off vacation and work 40 hours of patient contact time a week, with 50% over head, and charging about $30 per office visit, cash, and take home almost $250,000 a year.

Now that would save primary care in just about every part of this country you can imagine. And the market will determine the price.

And the cost savings would be immediate, and the cost would be no where near $125 billion dollars, as primary care would get out of the insurance business, forever, would have nothing to do with Medicare Part B

I call it my National Primary Health Care Initiative.

http://thehappyhospitalist.blogspot.com/2007/11/my-125-billion-dollar-experiment.html

Retainer medicine characteristics should be the standard of care for primary care, not the exception.

Under the current system doctors are paid for office visits and test, so we get office visits and test. Remove this incentive and we will see doctors practicing better medicine.

Steve Lucas