I'm captivated with the idea of concierge medicine right now...private pay, family medicine, and especially in combination with major medical insurance. It solves a lot of problems in the healthcare space right now.
MDVIP now has over 123,000 patients, with doctors who have no more than 600 patients in their practice. Average times with patients have gone from 8 minutes to over 1/2 hour, and longer for annual physical exams.
The issues of healthcare mandates and expense to small businesses is huge. It's a burden on economic recovery. Combining concierge private practice, private pay medicine with major medical insurance and a healthcare savings account can help a small business to cut their healthcare insurance expenses in half. That's a huge savings for a business with 9 or 10 employees, doing $1 or $2 million in sales a year...savings that can go to discretionary cash flow and used to hire, expand, grow, or make the payments on a new condo in Breckenridge (thus helping the real estate market).
Concierge medicine also has the potential to change the way we are dealing with our aging population. It's a travesty that a lifetime of accumulated wealth should be lost so rapidly when someone has to enter an assisted living or nursing home facility.
The most interesting aspect is its ability to put the power of economic decision-making squarely in the hands of the healthcare consumer, and reduce the negative impact of government intervention. The direct relationship between doctor and patient will improve quality, drive costs down, deliver cost savings to small businesses, and disrupt the government's power grab. All good things.
