First off, consider yourself blessed if you’re part of the growing community of practicing doctors who left the insurance nightmares behind. You’re going to have a lot on your plate now, even at less than maximum patient capacity. You’ve got to get your head around new billing processes, new responsibilities (like answering the phone and scheduling your own appointments) and most likely, a new office. However, you’ll want to prepare yourself for some serious patient expansion around the 18-month mark.
Tag Archives: direct primary care
Rose Egge Suggests 3 Ways To Get More Face Time With Your Doctor
You know the drill already. Healthcare costs are forcing doctors to see obscene numbers of patients just to keep their lights on, causing many doctors to spend less time with their patients. Rose Egge contributed a reassuring article to Concierge Medicine Today (CMT) going over techniques that some Seattle physicians are adopting to counter this trend. And one turns out just to be concierge medicine. It figures we’d make a list of this nature.
Writer Contributes Op/Ed Piece To Heal Overwhelmed Physicians
Jerry Avorn is a professor of medicine at Harvard and an internist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He’s also the author of “Powerful Medicines: The Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Prescription Drugs.” He wrote an eccentric and slightly polemic opinion piece in The New York Times that connects Marie-Henri Beyle, pseudonym Stendahl, with the current state of primary care treatment techniques.
How many staff do I need for a concierge medical practice?
Congratulations if you’ve popped the cork on your “cash-only” concierge medicine practice! From the outset, YOU are the captain of your practice, and the sole reason that it even exists. But we’ve got another question to ask before we get to staff…
More News Outlets Reporting About Backlash of Hospital Charges
Liz Kowalczyk of The Boston Globe is adding more tinder to the price transparency fire. Her recent article follows patients who are angered by surprise surcharges tacked on to their hospital bills for doctor visits and who are starting to challenging these fees — at times refusing to pay outright!
CNN Money Interviews Dr. Doug Nunamaker of AtlasMD
Here’s byline CNN ran for their recent concierge medicine article featuring Doug Nunamaker.
“Fed up with declining payments and rising red tape, a small but growing number of doctors are opting out of the insurance system completely. They’re expecting patients to pony up with cash.”
Patient complains about being overcharged thousands of dollars by a Napa hospital for medical laboratory tests
Dark Daily published an article saying a community hospital charged Kathy Meinhardt inpatient prices for clinical laboratory testing when she was a walk-up customer. As a result, Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa Valley has found itself centered within a media flare-up.
You Can Still Hang Out With Dr. Josh On Google+
The bad news is that Dr. Josh will no longer be hosting his regularly scheduled Google+ Hangouts, though. The good news is that’s because he and Dr. Doug have launched their weekly iTunes podcast. They’ll be discussing direct care start up, operation, and will do their best to answer any questions you submit to them.
However, if you still want to video chat with Josh, you can request a one-on-one hangout here. He’ll do his best to find time in his busy but flexible schedule.
We’re Making Atlas.md For YOU, Not EVERYONE
You may or may not know Dan Slinker. He’s taught journalism at Columbia College Chicago and was a Knight Fellow at Stanford University. He also created the controversially hilarious fake Twitter account @mayoremanuel.
He’s written a great article you should read here. His piece is entitled “Oh God, Don’t Make Things For ‘Everyone.’” and even though he’s writing about Vertigo Comics, a subsidiary of DC Comics, his point rings true with Atlas.md.