Who doesn’t want perfect health?
While this goal is difficult to achieve in real life, we can take steps to ensure that we’re protected and insured if something goes wrong.
If you have been diagnosed with a condition or are looking for the right medical care for your family, you may be looking into alternatives to the traditional patient care system.
There are alternatives, however, and the concierge model is one of them.
Here is a primer on the differences between both models available to you and your family.
Difference Between Traditional Health Care and a Concierge Model:
What’s The Traditional Insurance Based Model?
The traditional insurance based medical care model is what most people are familiar with as it is the most common model across the country.
This model demands doctors see as many patients are possible within a given time, often because of pressure from insurance companies.
Patients will typically spend more time in the waiting room than with their physician.
This can lead to patients with a wide range of health problems not getting the attention they need and also runs the risk of potential oversight of more subtle issues being detected.
Furthermore, patients often end up being seen by someone other than their regular physician, just as a nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant, which can fragment patient care.
What’s The Concierge Medical Care Model?
A concierge medicine practice avoids many of the pitfalls of the traditional insurance based model because it offers a more personalized and holistic approach to medical care. A concierge medicine practitioner can expect to give their patients more time and attention than their traditional counterparts because their schedule is less rigidly controlled by external forces. In general, care is often more personalized to patients’ specific needs.
The atmosphere in a concierge medical practice encourages patients to explain their symptoms fully, taking their time, leaving space for follow up questions, testing, and any other vital actions required.
In addition, a concierge medical care model offers two other important benefits:
1. A Holistic Approach.
When time isn’t restricted into unrealistic parcels, it gives a concierge physician the opportunity to get a good overview of a patient’s health in its entirety, including their mental health, as well as their nutrition and exercise habits.
Rather than only dealing with the patient’s most pressing needs and quickly sending them out the door, a concierge physician can understand the lifestyle interventions needed for each patient.
This is missing in traditional approaches as prescriptions are often hastily scribbled and patients ushered out the door as soon as possible.
The concierge model allows for the necessary follow ups in the correct time frames, better allowing healing to run its natural course.
2. Affordability.
Through monthly or annual fees, patients can gain access to their physician for preventative care, lifestyle interventions as well as acute medical crises.
This kind of model reduces unnecessary testing and retesting, saving you valuable time.
It can also provide a greater continuum of care as you can be sure you’ll always be seen by your actual physician as opposed to any of his or her auxiliaries.
Greater patient doctor relationships can be built like this and consequently greater understanding of the actual needs of a patient.
This paves the way for long term healing with and fewer complications over time, saving money in the long term.
What to Remember:
If you’re deciding how to best serve you and your family’s health needs, there can be a lot to take in and many things to consider. However, you should be sure to not sacrifice access to the best service available to you.
The traditional insurance based model functions by physicians cramming as many patients as they can into a given time frame.
This can often result in fragmented care and time wasted in waiting rooms.
A concierge style service allows a greater continuity of care without the time restraints associated with more traditional models.
It allows a more profound relationship to develop between patient and physician so they can better understand the needs of the individual and offer the best lifestyle interventions possible.
