By Matt Kuhrt
For doctors feeling frustrated or burned out by barriers to interacting with patients in a thorough, unhurried fashion, practices that generate revenue through membership fees have strong appeal, according to an article in Medscape.
Generally speaking, membership-driven practices come in three flavors, according to Medscape, each with its own set of pros and cons:
- Concierge medicine requires patients to pay fees for conveniences beyond those typically provided by traditional practices. The idea is to generate more income from fewer patients, affording more time for doctor-patient contact, which has the potential to benefit both the practice's bottom line and patient satisfaction, as FiercePracticeManagement has reported. On the other hand, insurers have shown a tendency to drop concierge practices from their networks, according to the article, and any duplication of extra services already covered by Medicare could leave a practice open to charges of double billing.
- The direct pay model cuts out reimbursements entirely, instead offering monthly rates to patients that are typically lower than those charged by concierge practices, according to Medscape. This reduces practice overhead for claims and coding, and keeps doctors more focused on providing solid service to patients, but it takes discipline to keep expenses low enough to make things work, says Josh Umbehr, M.D., of Wichita, Kansas. He also cautions that some state regulations also make it difficult, if not impossible, to make such models work.
- A hybrid model might work for doctors unwilling or unable to commit fully to either conceirge medicine or direct pay models. A hybrid model accepts a certain number of patients who pay for concierge or direct-pay memberships in addition to traditional patients. Since these arrangements don't offer the same reduction in patients as a straight-up concierge or direct pay practice, the extra work for physicians to commit extra time to a portion of the patient population can be a net negative, according to Roberta Greenspan, founder of Specialdocs Consultants in Highland Park, Illinois.
To learn more:
- see the article