For anyone unfamiliar, concierge medical is where you pay a stupid amount of money so that you can apparently bother your doctor anytime you want. Basically, you pay a yearly membership fee of anywhere between $1500-$4500 to have access to your doctor more than he/she probably wants you to and more than you’ll probably need. Understand that’s all that membership fee gets you. You still have the regular expenses for care and insurance accrurals that you normally would.
If I look at the situation objectively, I could see where this kind of system would be a good thing for people who are in the doctor’s office all the time. I’m not one of those people and I got booted from the practice I was going to because my doctor went to concierge medical and I wasn’t going with him.
I wouldn’t be so annoyed about this if the situation would have been made more clear. When my doctor made the switch I got a number of mailers explaining that he was switching to the new system, but the way it was presented it looked like he was going to go to another practice and I was given the impression that I was going to be rolled over to another doctor in the practice. I was given this impression because the last time I went in to the doctor, last January, they had me see another doctor, but apparently my regular doctor wasn’t around and the new doctor was just doing me a favor. Hence the reason I got the stiff arm when I tried to call in to my doctor last week.
One of the other doctors that I tried to get in with last week wanted a $1900 membership fee. Given we’re only going to be here until May I didn’t think that was the best deal in the world.
From some brief reading I did on the whole concierge medical thing, the reception has been mixed. Some practices tried with little to no success. Apparently, others have fared better in making the sansition. From my perspective its a crap idea, but I only go to the doctor once a year so what do I know. Well, I guess I do know that I’m not looking forward to finding a doctor when we get to th California.
