Dr. Makes a Stand Against Insurance Industry

Dr. Poss is beginning to feel more like an assembly line worker than a family physician, as she receives roughly $23 per patient from insurance companies. In order to make a living, she has to see six or seven patients an hour, which leaves little time for providing proper care and concern to each patient. The lack of fulfillment brought her to tears, as all of the reasons she went into medicine were sapped away. Having contemplated leaving medicine altogether, she decided instead to start a new practice, one which offers specialized care and highly personalized attention to each of her patients. Patients will pay her an annual fee which gives them unlimited access to her services as well as phone and email contact. This will allow her to offer the care she originally desired to offer, and frees her from the constraints of dealing with insurance companies. She has accomplished this by joining MDVIP, a small but growing Florida group of doctors offering this concierge style service to their patients. However, the legality of this type of operation is under sharp scrutiny, and some feel that it resembles a type of insurance and would therefore have to be regulated as such. Do you think this style of healthcare has a chance of catching on and being successful? Will it legally be allowed to continue?

This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 11:25 am and is filed under Florida health care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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