What do you think of "concierge medicine?"

[jmanpatsfan]

I recently came across a physician considering concierge medicine (explained in these articles http://www.physiciansnews.com/busine...alogredis.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concierge_medicine) but it basically consists of a doctor providing special and more personal services for a much smaller patient list in exchange for an annual fee ranging from $1,000 to $20,000 (ouch) per year in addition to regular insurance. This doctor would be downsizing from a few thousand patients to a few hundred to enable a more personal experience. What do you think of this service? Good idea? If you were this doctor's patient, would you be willing to pay a annual fee of a couple thousand dollars (more likely closer to 1k than 20k) to have full access to your doctor round the clock in addition to other convenient services?

[Lord Cadillac]

If I liked my doctor and actually trusted him, I'd go for it depending on the price..

[dkozloski]

My family doctor requires a retainer ranging from $120 to $360 per year because of the severe cuts made to Medicare. He told me that so much of his time was being taken up by administrative tasks, phone calls from patients, prescription renewals, and all the other distractions that he was having trouble paying his office staff and nurses. On the one hand he didin't want to turn away medicare parients but he also didn't want to face bankruptcy either. General practitioners/family medicine doctors are not getting rich. If you want him to renew prescriptions and answer E-Mail you have to pay him for his time. My rheumatologist, on the other hand, that charges three times what the GP does for an office visit is doing splendidly.