Most of us go to see the doctor with heath care insurance providers picking up the tab (assuming there is no deductible involved). With this current health provider model, doctors typically have a client list that numbers into the thousands, with 5,000 patients not being unusual. There is a growing trend to change this with concierge doctors.

A typical primary care physician has thousands of patients because they literally have to do a great deal of volume in order to make a decent living. The lack of decent reimbursements from health care insurance providers, plus the large student debt most doctors have, means that they have to be cranking through a large number of patients each day. This results in very quick sessions with each patient as doctors are unable to give the personalized care they would like to because of the time constraints they have.

The Fort Worth Business Press has a recent article about the growing number of doctors that are turning away from this assembly line model of health care and and turning into what are called private or concierge physicians. With this new business model, patients pay a monthly, or yearly, fee in order to have much better access to medical care and consultations.

Because these private, or fee-for-service, doctors have an income (through the fees paid directly to them by their patients) other than health care provider reimbursement, they are able to greatly reduce the number of clients they see to a much more manageable number. 500 clients is not an unusual number for the 2,000 or so private physicians that are currently practicing. This is a far cry from the thousands of clients a typical doctor sees.

Many new medical students are turning away from primary practices in favor of becoming specialists, because specialists typically make much more money than primary care physicians. This is leading to a lack of primary doctors, which is going to be a major issue as universal health care comes. The private doctor model allows primary care physicians to make as much, if not more, money as a specialist makes, which makes the primary care route much more attractive to new, and existing, doctors.

As you can imagine, not everyone will be able to pay for a private doctor. However, the idea is that fresh medical students will go to work at a doctors office that sees thousands of patients to get their client base and experience built up, then after a decade or so they can move into becoming a concierge doctor. This will ensure there is a steady stream of primary care physicians for everyone, with the doctors eventually moving into a money making stage of their career once they have built up a client base that is willing to pay the fees for access to a private doctor.

The health care landscape is changing and it will be most interesting to see how things shake up. Stay tuned and get ready for what might be an interesting ride!

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