The innovation of concierge medical practice has been a frequent topic here, so this recent NY Times article on the development of a low-cost concierge medical practice model caught my eye:
With 31 physicians in San Francisco and New York, [One Medical Group] offers most of the same services provided by personalized “concierge” medical practices, but at a much lower price: $150 to $200 a year.
One Medical Group doctors see at most 16 patients a day; the nationwide average for primary-care physicians is 25. They welcome e-mail communication with patients, for no extra charge. Same-day appointments are routine. And unlike most concierge practices, One Medical accepts a variety of insurance plans, including Medicare. [. . .]
. . . One Medical is the first to try to carry out such a model on a large scale. It now has several thousand patients and a growth rate of 50 percent a year, fueled largely by word of mouth. Dr. Lee said he planned to open a third office in Manhattan next month and expand to a third large city next year.
It will be interesting to see if this model still works on a larger scale, particularly if less healthy patients use a highly disproportionate amount of doctor time and resources.
However, as this latest disclosure regarding Obamacare reinforces, truly beneficial health care finance reform is more likely to come through innovations such as One Medical Group, not through government-managed overhauls.
tom,
i think you are correct about private innovation offering whatever a patient is looking for. cheapest is follow your insurance to the bus station waiting room. for 149 dollars/yr. plus your insurance, One Medical looks to do a MUCH better job.
my own practice is similar but different: same day, on time, good and pleasant care, no tape machines, probably not on your insurance but no annual fee, only pay for services rendered with cap of 750$/year—just one more version of private innovation.
most expensive is “concierge”, being needlessly expensive, dubious as a proper doctor/patient relationship (think “michael jackson doc”), and likely not sustainable beyond any extent that it represents one of the “bookends”.
hopefully, as obamacare is imposed, such innovation will remain “legal”–no one in 1985 would have dreamed that, 2 years later, under ronald reagan, the united states of america would make it illegal for a doctor to require a wealthy grandmother to pay the same usual and customary fee as a carpenter with 4 kids but indeed “they” did and it remains the law of the land. (this is AMAZING, caused the “healthcare crisis” and receives too little attention in your blog and other venues)
Why is it that in countries which have universal
healthcare the loudest voices for privatizing it
are heard from those who would profit from it financially, and rich people who get livid at the thought of contributing to the health and well-being
of their maids, drivers and other low-paid workers?
T.E.A.M. = Together Everyone Achieves More
Why is it wrong for people to profit from providing healthcare?
Healthcare providers, like police, soldiers, fire fighters etc. certainly deserve to be paid well.
I was referring mainly to insurance companies.
I don’t think it’s a good thing for society at large, to allow public services to be privatized, as has been done with companies such as Blackstone, in Iraq and Afghanistan – where the main thing they provide is profits for the company and misery for most of the civilians in those places.
To Bill McW,
Regardless whether you think “public services” should or should not be privatized, the City if Indianapolis and State of Indiana have proven that it can work to the benefit of all by keeping the finances from ruining all the public services.
You obviously have the opinion that people such as yourself should either (if they are able) have an unending obligation to support others, or receive unending support from others. How do you come up with that? What is the cutoff and or limit to the largesse? Who determines?