The Concierge Practice
The concierge practice has grown not out of greed, but from cultural necessity.
Special arrangements between people are as old as humankind itself. Formal arrangements like marriage and informal ones such as neighborhood watch programs. Some arrangements include financial transactions, such as banking or purchasing items with layaway terms. Other relationships are based upon honor and allegiance as in being a citizen to your birth country.
• The industry of medicine is predicated on special arrangements…
• The relationship between physician, patient, and pharmacist
• Contracts with insurance companies
• Pricing variances between hospitals, government, and Pharma
• Non-Compete agreements for practitioners
The list can go on and on. Yet all relationships assume a special arrangement.
The concierge practice is a logical outcome of persons wanting a special relationship within the medical space. Patients want something unique that traditional medicine cannot provide and providers welcome something that enables them to practice medicine in a special way.
Practitioners who opt for this type of practice are just responding to the clamoring of their patients. Patients are tired of quick visits, long waits, the ambiguity of insurance costs and deductibles. There is a premium on the commodity of time, and the concierge practice values that commodity. So the patient will pay reasonable fees the provider who is excellent in their field, highly respects the patient’s time and make themselves accessible to the patient’s schedule.
All of this, because time is the commodity and a segment of both patients and practitioners share its value.
Your practice will do well to heed the cultural values of time and convenience. Learn from the Urgent Care model, a form of this practice. With predetermined fees of $50 to $75 and quick immediate care, these “off-shoots” of the ER model are making a financial killing.
It was just a matter of time for the concierge practice to emerge in our market. Bundled in fee-for-service packages, easier access to healthcare and personal specialists Whatever the form, this special arrangement between patients and providers is not going away.