It’s a physician who gets paid a subscription by a small panel of patients.
Pros: more time spent with patients, access to a physician basically 24/7, sometimes included are other amenities (labs, imaging, sometimes access to rx at doctors office for simple generics, gym discounts, eye doctor discounts, etc)
Cons: it’s an extra cost to get access to that physician yearly ranging from a few hundred US dollars per year to sometimes thousands $1.5k-3k (or tens of thousands or more), those who aren’t financially lucky to be that well off don’t get such access.
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That said, some of us do this on the side to augment our salary a bit as medicine has become too much of a business based on quantity and not quality. Sad that I hear from patients that said a simple small town family doc like myself can spent 20-30mins with a patient when other providers barely spend 3 mins. My regular patients get usually 20-30mins with me on a visit unless it’s a quick one for refills and I don’t leave until they are done and have no questions. My concierge patients get 1 hour minimum and longer if they like. I offer free in-depth medical record review where I get sometimes boxes of old records to review someone’s med history if they are a new concierge patient. Had a lady recently deal with neuropathy and paresthesias for years. Normal blood counts. Long story short. She had moderate iron deficiency and vitamin b 6 deficiency from history of taking isoniazid in a different country for TB and biopsy proven celiac disease. Neuropathy basically gone with iron and b6 supplements and a celiac diet after I recommended a GI eval for endoscopy. It takes time to dig into charts like this and CMS doesn’t pay the bills to keep the clinic lights open to see patients like that all the time and this is why we are in such a bad place healthcare wise in the USA were we have chosen quality than quantity and the powers that be are number crunchers and not actual health care providers. It serves us right for let’s admins take over and we are all paying the price.
So much more I want to say but I don’t think many will read this. But if you read this and don’t like your doctor, please look around. There are still some of us out there that care about quality medicine and do try our best to spend time with the patient. If you got one of those “3 minute doctors” look for one or consider establishing care with a resident clinic at an academic center were you can be seen by resident doctors and their attending physicians. It’s not the most efficient but can almost guarantee those resident physicians will spend a good chunk of time with you to help you as much as they can.
alt Hacker News
It’s a physician who gets paid a subscription by a small panel of patients.
Pros: more time spent with patients, access to a physician basically 24/7, sometimes included are other amenities (labs, imaging, sometimes access to rx at doctors office for simple generics, gym discounts, eye doctor discounts, etc)
Cons: it’s an extra cost to get access to that physician yearly ranging from a few hundred US dollars per year to sometimes thousands $1.5k-3k (or tens of thousands or more), those who aren’t financially lucky to be that well off don’t get such access.
—-
That said, some of us do this on the side to augment our salary a bit as medicine has become too much of a business based on quantity and not quality. Sad that I hear from patients that said a simple small town family doc like myself can spent 20-30mins with a patient when other providers barely spend 3 mins. My regular patients get usually 20-30mins with me on a visit unless it’s a quick one for refills and I don’t leave until they are done and have no questions. My concierge patients get 1 hour minimum and longer if they like. I offer free in-depth medical record review where I get sometimes boxes of old records to review someone’s med history if they are a new concierge patient. Had a lady recently deal with neuropathy and paresthesias for years. Normal blood counts. Long story short. She had moderate iron deficiency and vitamin b 6 deficiency from history of taking isoniazid in a different country for TB and biopsy proven celiac disease. Neuropathy basically gone with iron and b6 supplements and a celiac diet after I recommended a GI eval for endoscopy. It takes time to dig into charts like this and CMS doesn’t pay the bills to keep the clinic lights open to see patients like that all the time and this is why we are in such a bad place healthcare wise in the USA were we have chosen quality than quantity and the powers that be are number crunchers and not actual health care providers. It serves us right for let’s admins take over and we are all paying the price.
So much more I want to say but I don’t think many will read this. But if you read this and don’t like your doctor, please look around. There are still some of us out there that care about quality medicine and do try our best to spend time with the patient. If you got one of those “3 minute doctors” look for one or consider establishing care with a resident clinic at an academic center were you can be seen by resident doctors and their attending physicians. It’s not the most efficient but can almost guarantee those resident physicians will spend a good chunk of time with you to help you as much as they can.