Name:   MartiniMan - Subject:   It's called concierge practices Date:   10/19/2015 12:16:03 PM

My internest switched to this type of practice three years ago.  Their practice hired a consultant to study their business and the gist of it was they needed to spend no more than five minutes with a patient and had to see some ridiculous number of them every day for it to make sense financially given the reimbursement rates (both govt and private insurance).  Also told them they needed to restrict Medicare/Medicaid patients to a very low percentage of their overall patient makeup because of the much lower reimbursement rates.  

So he decided to go concierge and changes between $1,200 and $1,600 per year which is paid out of pocket.  Interesting side note, I asked him how it was going and he said the one thing they did not consider adverse selection with the relatively healthy patients electing not to sign up and the more illness prone patients signing on.  I am a low maintenance patient and negotiated a lower annual fee.