It offers you more time with your Doctor, and more personal attention. However, are you willing to pay for it?
MARCH 18, 2015 -
WILLIAMSVILLE, NY – In his 26 years as general practitioner of internal medicine, Dr. William Healy was at times frustrated, as a typical physician with 2,500 patients might be.
“I wanted to give my patients more. I wanted to spend more time with them,” Dr. Healy explained to WGRZ-TV. “We would see 25 to 30 patients a day, and typically you can give ten to 15 minutes. In the practice of internal medicine, most of the diagnosis comes from the history. In order to do that properly, you need time to talk with people and interact with them. The patient has to feel comfortable to tell you what’s going on and you need that rapport,” he said.
Last year, Healy became the first doctor in Western New York to become an affiliate of a Florida based physicians group called MDVIP.
Here is how it works.
Healy agreed to reduce his patients to no more than 600.
With less patients, a typical visit now lasts at least a half hour.
“And it’s 30 minutes with the doctor,” Healy noted.
The annual wellness visit for one of his patients is now typically 2-1/2 hours, and more thorough.
“We can do comprehensive blood work; we screen their vision and their hearing. They get EKGs, breathing tests, circulation tests. They get a full physical,” he said.
Fewer patients also means its far more likely that you will be able to see the doctor without delay at your appointed time, and that when one of his patients is admitted to a hospital, they are likely to get a visit from Dr Healy, their primary care physician, while they are there.
‘I’m able to do rounds on my own patients …it even frees me up to do house calls,” he said.
In addition, all of his patients have his phone number.
“And when it’s not during office hours, I’m the one that answers the phone,” Dr. Healy said.
But time is money, and delivery of what’s been referred to alternatively as “concierge”, “membership”, or “retainer” medicine, comes with a price for those willing to pay.
To keep Healy as her doctor, and get all that extra attention, Dana Dee pays a yearly fee of $1,600 in addition to her health insurance
“Dr. Healy has been my physician for years,” Dee told Two on Your Side. “Yes, it’s an investment but it is an investment in myself to stay healthy.”
However, by joining up with MDVIP, it required Healy to jettison close to 2,000 former patients, in order to meet the group’s enrollment restrictions.
“I was also required and was responsible for helping them find other physicians,” he said.
Healy also receives a cut of the MDVIP membership fees paid by Dee and other patients, to offset the patients he lost due to the enrollment restriction.
For those who paid to stay, he even invites them to join him for a walk once week, as part of their personal comprehensive wellness plan.
“When you walk with people, you get to know them…and this model lets me do the medicine I was trained to do,” he said.
Critics claim this model of health care delivery promotes a two-tiered health system, favoring the wealthy, and limiting the number of doctors to care for those who cannot afford it.
On the other hand, it appears this type of practice is far from becoming a trend.
MDVIP, which has been in existence for 15 years, only has about 800 affiliated doctors nationwide, and the Physicians Foundation reports only 7% percent of all practices have any plans to embark on this model in the near future, although Dr. Healy says he knows of one practice locally about to offer this type of service.
