Call it concierge care.
Some Orange County doctors weary of heavy patient volume and excessive haggling with health plans have turned to “boutique” medical practices.
Under the model, patients pay for an annual membership. The fee gives them same- or next-day appointments, reduced waiting times, longer exams and access to their doctors via mobile phones, fax and pagers.
It’s not cheap, with memberships running about $1,800 for individuals in some cases. Lawyers, executives and other professionals are typical concierge patients.
Doctors say it’s a way for patients to get more time in the physician’s office. The reason: Doctors can afford to limit the number of people they see to less than 10 a day because of the annual fees.
“It was a growing frustration that we were not able to provide the level of care we felt our patients deserved (because) we were seeing 30, 40 patients per day,” said Dr. Jeffrey Barke, a family physician and co-owner of Newport Medical Consultants in Newport Beach.
“Jeff and I started thinking three years ago about how we could provide our patients with better care,” said Dr. Kenneth Cheng, Barke’s partner.
Cheng said the doctors went up to Seattle to study boutique practices that were popular there.
“We found that type of practice, with a few modifications, would work very well in this area,” Cheng said.
Seattle is considered the birthplace of concierge care. Dr. Howard Maron, an internal medicine physician who was team doctor for the National Basketball Association’s Seattle Supersonics in the mid-1990s, established M2 in 1996, which is thought to be the country’s first concierge medicine practice.
Key for concierge doctors is limiting how many patients are allowed in their practice.
At Huntington Beach’s Private Physicians Medical Associates, Dr. Richard Van Meter said that he and partner Dr. James Weiss, a fellow internal medicine physician, don’t want to see more than 1,000 patients between them.
“My old practice was over 3,000 patients a year,” said Van Meter, who previously practiced with Huntington Beach Internal Medicine Group. “It was not uncommon to see between 30 and 40 patients a day.”
Van Meter and Weiss launched Private Physicians last year.
Concierge practices make money, in part, by charging their patients the enrollment or membership fees.
Private Physicians, for example, charges $3,000 a year for two family members and $1,800 a year for an individual.
A separate healthcare plan offered by Private Physicians costs $2,000 and includes a physical exam, wellness program and other doctor services.
At Newport Medical, Cheng said a typical office visit for members costs $70 to $75. He declined to say how much a membership costs.
Both practices accept Medicare and bill insurance companies, albeit with some caveats.
“We participate with just about every PPO provider,we’re not affiliated with any of the HMOs,” Newport Medical’s Barke said.
Barke and Cheng previously practiced with Greater Newport Physicians, a medical group affiliated with Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach.
State regulations require doctors to bill patients’ insurance carriers for care.
The doctors say their practices don’t rely on heavy advertising or marketing to attract patients.
“Word of mouth is probably our major source of new patients,” said Private Physicians’ Van Meter.
Newport Medical’s Cheng and Barke said they see newcomers to concierge medicine as a validation of their practice. The niche, they said, offers an alternative to traditional medicine.
“We think there’s a huge need,” Barke said.
Concierge medicine isn’t widespread. The American Society of Concierge Physicians says that there are fewer than 500 doctors in the U.S. running such practices.
The concierge model has raised ethical concerns.
An article in the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine Observer raised questions about the practices as early as 2001.
The article questioned whether concierge care was a potential step toward a two-tiered medical system where wealthy patients get no-wait exams while poorer patients wait for hours to see a doctor for 15 minutes.
