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Doctors use 'concierge care' to spend more time with patients
Waiting rooms. Insurance and medical history forms to fill out. Waiting again once your name is called, sitting alone in a cold, white room and then seeing a doctor for 10 minutes before being shipped out with a prescription that will hopefully cure you.
Sound familiar? It's what most Americans go through when they visit their primary care physicians.
It may not be a trend, but so far, seven primary care doctors in Virginia have have converted their practices to a more personalized style of treatment, a hybrid of what is called "concierge medicine." Two of the seven doctors are in Fairfax County. By the end of the year, there will be 22 concierge-care physicians in Virginia.
A few years ago there was controversy over the concept of concierge medicine, with physicians saying goodbye to thousands of regular patients and instead taking lump sum, annual payments of a couple thousand dollars for a more comprehensive and financially rewarding approach to treatment.
But the change was too dynamic and thousands of patients were faced with an ultimatum: stay with their trusted doctor and pony up the funds, or find another doctor.
Springfield's Dr. Marc Eller decided to compromise. On Aug. 1, his practice, open since 1994 off Backlick Road in Springfield, will offer the concierge hybrid plan for up to 600 of his 3,000 patients, while still seeing those regular patients. A couple of hours will be set aside for those concierge patients every day.
So far, 45 patients have signed up.
"The insurance companies aren't paying us to talk with patients for 30 or 40 minutes about nutrition. I will have time now to try and get people to exercise more, eat better," Eller said.
"A lot of doctors around the country are having problems paying the bills and generating a reasonable income, and that pressure is not going to go away, especially in an inflationary period," said Wayne Lipton, the founder of the hybrid model, Concierge Choice Physicians.
The product received for a payment of $1,600 to Eller is an hour-long annual physical, a dedicated phone line in the doctor's office, Eller's cell phone number to call at any time, half-hour appointments that start on time as well as a medical memory stick that other physicians can upload to their computers in case of emergency.
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