Concierge health care...

[dcs13]

I have an awesome general doctor. He's been great. I get a letter today saying he's leaving the practice he's been associated with to join a "concierge" practice. For the privilege of being his patient I can pay $2000 a year and they still file on my insurance. Says I can get appointments is 24 hours, in house lab work, and he will be a "healthcare advocate" if I end up in the Baylor hospital.
Seriously, I find a doc I like and this shit happens. Thanks Obamacare..

[Musbrad2]

I have an awesome general doctor. He's been great. I get a letter today saying he's leaving the practice he's been associated with to join a "concierge" practice. For the privilege of being his patient I can pay $2000 a year and they still file on my insurance. Says I can get appointments is 24 hours, in house lab work, and he will be a "healthcare advocate" if I end up in the Baylor hospital.
Seriously, I find a doc I like and this shit happens. Thanks Obamacare..

Wasn't Randlow Smith by chance? He's our GP, I think there a quite a few leaving from Baylor and starting the service.

[dcs13]

No, it was Aaron Samsula. Great Doc, but I'm just not prepared to pay 2k to be his customer...

[1carcrazyguy]

Sounds like he is looking for 1%er clients...

[Broncojohnny]

I have heard of them doing this and accepting reasonable cash payments for their services. I haven't heard of them still going through your insurance. I thought the idea of concierge medicine was for them to do away with the back office three ring circus of trying to get insurance to pay.

[svauto-erotic855]

They have to do something to stay in business. You may want to dig further into the details of what he is offering. It may not be such a bad deal.

It kind of tickles me that I charge more per year to take care of a pool. I wonder if your doc will trade with me?

[RWhite]

Had this happen to my wife's doctor last month. He just up and gave 2 weeks notice and said he was going to open up a "concierge" practice up in McKinney. Costs were layered depending upon your age....older folks costs more than younger ones. Since we are over 65 and on Medicare with a secondary insurance thru Raytheon, we went and found another doctor that takes Medicare.

All the time we were with this doctor, he was complaining of the little income he gets from Medicare. Looking at my wife's monthly Medicare statement of services, I can imagine his worry. Doctors get a very small percentage of the actual charge sent to the govt.

........

BTW, at his practice, you pay cash (a monthly fee) for his services and he does not accept any sort of insurance. A small number (a dozen or so) of normal type of exams are covered free, but the list is not very large.

Its getting harder to find a doctor that will treat Medicare patients. Hope this changes soon, as the outlook looks gloomy!

[AdRock]

My GP doctor also bowed out. He closed his practice year before last to join a multi doctor group to make things easier on himself. But just after the first of this year i got a letter from him saying that he wasnt there anymore but the other 5 doctors were happy to absorb his clients. I now think that this was his plan all along. I think he went concierge and wanted to start over with a much higher income base of clients. I dont blame hime though, if i was.a gp doc right now i would probably do the same thing.

[slingshot]

Here is my view from the other side from an earlier thread...

Every doc is different. I always have same day sick appointments available, only way you don't get seen same day is if I'm out of town or on vacation--even then I have a call partner that will, I cover him the same way. My patients have my and my nurse's cell #'s and can access me by secure email. I only see 10-15 patients per day, the average waiting room time is less than 10 minutes and we usually run on time, unfortunately emergencies do arise and we do occasionally run late, never over 30 minutes. I also make nursing home visits and house calls for those too sick to come in. My standard office visits are half an hour and every patient gets a comprehensive annual exam with advanced cardiac risk labs, pulmonary testing, EKG, screening lower extremity doppler test for early peripheral arterial disease, anxiety and depression screenings, thorough dietary assessment and counseling, etc...
In what alternative universe does this kind of service and care exist? It's called concierge medicine. After 24 yrs of packed waiting rooms, seeing 30-40+ pts per day, chronically running 1-2 hours behind and working 12-14 hrs per day--I changed over about a year ago. I actually love practicing medicine again and the patients that signed up love it too...
I know I'll get flamed for all this so do your worst.

You have to decide if it is worth the $137 per month cost. Certainly not for everyone...

[svauto-erotic855]

Here is my view from the other side from an earlier thread...
You have to decide if it is worth the $137 per month cost. Certainly not for everyone...

It says Abiline under your avatar but please be in the DFW area; you are what I have been looking for.

[slingshot]

It says Abiline under your avatar but please be in the DFW area; you are what I have been looking for.

LOL! Metromess is a great place to visit... but way to many peoples living in one area for me. I like good 'ole boring Abilene just fine! Get on www.mdvip.com to find someone near you that has this type of practice...

[slingshot]

Here are the ones near Dallas accepting new patients... https://www.mdvip.com/get-started/ph...0&doctor_name=