# Anyone here used a "concierge physician". Looks interesting! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 2, 2005, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-here-used-a-concierge-physician-looks-interesting/288004 "2005-02-02T17:02:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2005, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-here-used-a-concierge-physician-looks-interesting/288004/1 "2005-02-02T17:02:22Z")
I’m an independent contractor. I’m a pretty healthy person and my crap ass, sky high “Golden Rule” deductible plan costs more and more for limited benefits. (I’ve never even come within breathing distance of the $ 3500 deductible) Visiting the doctor is huge PITA waiting and time wasting wise. This looks interesting. Anyone used one of these “on call” doctors? [House Calls Goodbye to long waits, inattentive physicians and all that. Special treatment can be yours—at a price](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6885323/site/newsweek/) > [@](#): > > Feb. 7 issue - Two years ago, Fred Perenic decided the doctors in his health plan weren’t worth a dime. “It was hard to get an appointment, and I never saw the same guy twice,” says Perenic, 53, the president of a Detroit manufacturing company. At the doctor’s office “everyone was always in a rush. It was maddening.” So Perenic signed on with Dr. John Blanchard. For a $5,000 annual fee, Blanchard provides Perenic with a yearly three-hour physical, same-day appointments and his personal cell number. Blanchard also calls on Perenic at work to monitor his blood pressure. The price is steep, says Perenic, but for the first time in years, he feels taken care of. Having this much time with a physician, he says, “is almost a guilty pleasure.” > > Overcrowded offices and overworked physicians have made a trip to the doctor feel like more than a hassle: it’s dispiriting. Now, a small but growing number of doctors, clinics and hospitals are offering premium service to elite customers—and affluent baby boomers like Fred Perenic are shelling out big bucks to get it. About 250 so-called “concierge physicians” exist in the United States today: these are primary-care doctors who charge an annual retainer in exchange for same-day appointments, unhurried exams and house calls. The Cooper Clinic in Dallas, whose tab is $3,000 for an eight-hour physical exam, has seen its client base grow 45 percent in the last four years. Baltimore-based Pinnacle Care International charges members between $5,000 and $25,000 a year, in addition to a hefty initiation fee, to keep track of medical records and coordinate health care. Members can get fast-track appointments with overbooked specialists, too. > > Health-care experts who fret that too many medical resources are already being spent on too few say the new trend only makes matters worse. Forty-five million Americans live without health insurance. The growth in high-end medicine “is yet another stark inequity in an already unequal system,” says David Magnus, a biomedical ethicist from Stanford University. Concierge docs defend boutique care, saying it frees them up to do their jobs right. “I can afford to take the time I need to really listen and get to know each person,” says Blanchard. The pay is good, too. While primary-care doctors, on average, make $140,000 a year, Blanchard, who has capped his practice at 100 patients, could make $500,000 before he even picks up a stethoscope. Top specialists find room in their busy schedules for deep-pocketed Pinnacle members, says COO Rick Kramer, because “these patients can pay for their services outright.” ---
**Author:** ![CrazyCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dfb087/32.png) [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2005, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-here-used-a-concierge-physician-looks-interesting/288004/2 "2005-02-02T17:30:35Z")
There was a doctor who moved down here and opened such a practice a year or two back, but I don’t know how it’s working out for her. She seems to be something of a loonie bird, based on her website, and I’d be afraid to go to her even if I could afford it. That’s just her, though. If you’re pretty healthy and don’t have many medical expenses anyway, I don’t know that it would really pay off, economically. Near as I can tell, these fees don’t include medications, procedures, visits to the ER, hospitalization, etc, just office visits and phone consultations. That’s $5000 for one annual checkup, and a couple of illnesses a year, for the average healthy person. That’s one hellacious convenience fee. If you had chronic health problems that needed closer monitoring like the guy in the article, it might be a very cost-effective solution, though. ---
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2005, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-here-used-a-concierge-physician-looks-interesting/288004/3 "2005-02-02T17:37:01Z")
- - - I have not but I have read elsewhere of a small number of doctors in the US who have quit accepting all forms of medical insurance, and go to cash pay only. The article I saw did not say anything about them charging particularly high fees, but I guess if you can’t pay it, it’s too high. The reason they give is that they have found that they needed to retain large staffs just to process all the insurance paperwork, and since the amount they can make on each patient is limited by insurance policies, they have to schedule a lot of patients. As a result of that many felt that they never spent enough time with individual patients. Without the need to process private and public insurance paperwork, their staffs drop from 4-5+ people to just one, the patient load drops way down allowing better service with individual patients and the doctors often end up making nearly as much or more in income as before. ~ ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2005, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-here-used-a-concierge-physician-looks-interesting/288004/4 "2005-02-02T18:33:59Z")
As someone without health insurance, I find the whole thing embarrasing. I can’t believe we live in a nation with such amazing richness that we can spend it on “consierge doctors”, but leave our working poor to have their small savings devestated by things like a bout of pneumonia. But I gotta wonder about an _eight hour physical_. Thats something I’d pay a few thousands bucks to avoid. I think I’d also avoid the company of people so self-important that they feel they are too good to sit in a waiting room for a few minutes. I mean, whats wrong with the constitution of our nation when people go to doctors to “feel taken care of” instead of to get, you know, health problems addressed. I think it’s just a case of people getting off by spending money. ---
**Author:** ![35340](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/8baadc/32.png) [@35340](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/35340)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2005, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-here-used-a-concierge-physician-looks-interesting/288004/5 "2005-02-02T18:47:23Z")
> [@even sven](#): > > But I gotta wonder about an _eight hour physical_. Thats something I’d pay a few thousands bucks to avoid. Three hour physical - I’d expect it means some time on the treadmill, monitoring your heart and condition, things like that. > [@even sven](#): > > I think I’d also avoid the company of people so self-important that they feel they are too good to sit in a waiting room for a few minutes. I invite you to wait four hours for a physician 8 and a half months pregnant. Though a number of smaller midwife practices (that I’m too “high risk” for) who do make house calls, and at insurance rate prices. Everyone has to find the way to get along as best they can. So someone builds a better moustrap and you have to be the dog in the manger? > [@even sven](#): > > I mean, whats wrong with the constitution of our nation when people go to doctors to “feel taken care of” instead of to get, you know, health problems addressed. Preventative medicing saves a lot of money and lives every year - do a shred of research, buddy. > [@even sven](#): > > I think it’s just a case of people getting off by spending money. How is the view from that manger, sven? ---
**Author:** ![CrazyCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dfb087/32.png) [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2005, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-here-used-a-concierge-physician-looks-interesting/288004/6 "2005-02-02T19:03:12Z")
> [@Mynn](#): > > Three hour physical - I’d expect it means some time on the treadmill, monitoring your heart and condition, things like that. No, she’s right about that bit. The article says the Cooper Clinic does 8-hour physicals, to the tune of $3000. As for the dog in the manger comments, although I think the money comments are out of line, she does bring up some valid points. A whopping lot of people in this country go without the most basic healthcare–a criminally large number, imo. And the more doctors go into very small, limited-numbers practices like this, the fewer appointment slots there are for the rest of us. That just makes it even harder to get an appointment, makes for more urgent squeeze-ins that throw off the rest of the schedule and increase wait times, etc. So it’s not necessarily a better mousetrap at all. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2005, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-here-used-a-concierge-physician-looks-interesting/288004/7 "2005-02-02T19:37:50Z")
I guess I was unnecessarily caustic with the money comment. I’ve learned in my life that to many people the value of a thing is directly related to how much money they spent on. People will enjoy a $50.00 bottle of wine more than they enjoy the same wine at ten bucks. They will buy collectables- or antiques if they have more money- that have no practical value and are basically expensive because they are expensive. They will talk about their five hundred dollar a foot speaker cables. They will stay on the “consierge” level at Disney World, whoes main benefit is “free” snacks and sodas at double the room price. The mere act of spending money makes people feel special, important, powerful and safe. Some people have learned to capitalize this by providing people with big oppertunities to spend massive amounts of money with very little real benefit- the diamond industry, the wedding industry, the fine vodka industry, etc. I think this is one of those things. ---
**Author:** ![Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e56c9b/32.png) [@Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harriet_the_Spry)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2005, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-here-used-a-concierge-physician-looks-interesting/288004/8 "2005-02-02T23:26:44Z")
The purpose of insurance is to protect you against financial risk. For health insurance, we get way bogged down here in the US running every little expense through an insurance company. Definitely adds to cost and gums up the works, so to speak. The thing you need to look into here is whether you will have coverage for something catastrophic that might happen. It doesn’t sound like it. That is the key to the value of health insurance - the heart attack, the transplant, the premature newborn. The rest is just customer service and feel free to pay a little more to get better service, but keep in mind the primary need to protect yourself against a catastrophic loss.