There are many moments throughout your life when you will sit back and think, “why didn’t I do that when I had the chance.” When you’re worried about the onset of cancer, wondering if your primary care physician caught it in time, the idea of concierge medicine sounds pretty good. As Michael Douglas releases news about his throat tumor and the treatment he’s going to have to endure, we should all take a moment to revaluate our health care situations.

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Above all, if your concierge doctor catches the tumor early, as in the case of Michael Douglas, throat cancer can be cured in 90% of patients. Fortunately for patients of concierge medicine, these are the conditions that can be instantly diagnosed with a yearly executive physical.

To read this article fully, visit http://www.SignatureMD.com today!

Medicare, Medicare, Medicare. Nope, I’m not trying to garner the search engines attention; I’m trying to grab your attention. Do I have it? Since even before Medicare was passed in 1965 it’s been a source of frustration and intense debate from The Hill to Main Street. From concierge doctors to politicians to retired seniors, the debate rages on.

While Andy Griffith is currently appearing in television ads explaining Medicare changes to seniors, and the White House is praising its upcoming health care overhaul, the facts of how Medicare will change still remain a bit fuzzy.

Get this entire article over at http://www.signaturemd.com/health-care-reform-medicare-change/ today!!

Concierge medicine got its start in Seattle in 1996 when former doctors for the Seattle Supersonics built a family practice that provided the same kind of highly personalized care they offered to athletes. MD2 limits each of its physicians to treating just 50 families. The annual fee for this kind of exclusivity is an eye-popping $25,000 per family. But patients are reportedly pampered with marble bathrooms and monogrammed robes, in addition to round-the-clock access to their physicians. This is likely where the perception that Concierge Medicine is only accessible to the rich and famous.

Get the rest of this article and much more about concierge medicine at SignatureMD.com.

There are a many, many reasons why concierge medicine is such a hot-button topic in America today. With health care still at the top of our national conversations, primary care physician shortages, the quality of patient care, and the overall picture of medicine in our country is changing more rapidly than we can keep up.

As the world is faced with “deep-recession” and countries are nearly failing due to excessive amounts of debt, government spending has come to the forefront. In the United States, over 16% of Gross Domestic Product is spent on Healthcare each year and with an aging population this number is constantly rising. Health and Human Services Department expects that the health share of GDP will continue its historical upward trend, reaching 19.5% of GDP by 2017. Of each dollar spent on health care in the United States 31% goes to hospital care, 21% goes to physician services, 10% to pharmaceuticals, 8% to nursing homes, 7% to administrative costs, and 23% to all other categories (diagnostic laboratory services, pharmacies, medical device manufacturers, etc….The newly passed Healthcare Reform Bill will cost approximately $940 Billion over the next 10 years. It should be mentioned that the Congressional Budget Office has estimated this bill will actually reduce the deficit by $138 Billion over the same 10 year period. However, this is a lot of capital to tie up into any one program in these tough times.

Check out the rest of this incredibly interesting post over at http://www.SignatureMD.com.

We all know that a visit to the family physician is worth about an hour of our time, but that isn’t an entire hour with the doctor. That’s about 45 minutes in the waiting room and maybe 15 minutes in the office, if you’re lucky. Unless, of course, you have a concierge doctor.  Primary care physicians are dealing with “The 15 minute hour” as they struggle to overload themselves with patient information to make an informed diagnosis; and hour’s diagnosis, in less than 15 minutes. In reality, it’s more like 8 minutes.

If you haven’t had time to check out A Country Doctor Writes here at Wordpress, now is the time.  Being in the business of concierge medicine and personalized attention, this country doctor who actually makes house calls is inspiring.  There aren’t many physicians around who are able to do what this man does.

Self described as a “small town” physician for over twenty years, this doctor has seen his local families grow and change, and has the “perspective fewer and fewer physicians have today.” He is the perfect example of where concierge medicine’s roots are.

The most recent post on his blog deals with a new book entitled “The Fifteen Minute Hour.” It’s the limited amount of time that physicians get with their patients these days, and our featured Country Doctor has something to say about it:

“In Primary Care we seldom spend more than 15 minutes at a time with an established patient. Yet we are required to cover infinitely more details and consider more outside authorities in every visit today than when I first started practicing medicine. Between health insurance and office administration, there are now many more mouths to feed from the office charges than there were then. Sometimes it feels like we are not alone in the exam room even for the short time we do have.

Except for doctors in concierge medicine or micropactices, most of us cannot change the amount of time we have with each patient. Even if we hope to change the system, the patients we see today deserve the best we can give them in today’s 15-minute visits.”

Truly, we couldn’t have summed it up any better. Concierge physicians are the epitome of what Country Doctor speaks of in his blog. Check out http://www.SignatureMD.com for more information.

Concierge doctors are more than just family physicians; they are extremely experienced and dedicated physicians who are at the top of their game.  As health care reform starts to take effect over the coming years, more and more patients will seek out concierge doctors, and more and more physicians will convert to concierge medicine. It’s not a matter of income or class; it’s a matter of quality care. There are now around 5,000 concierge medical practices across the U.S, plus over 1,000 that have opened within the last year. These numbers will no doubt skyrocket within the coming years.

Concierge medicine is a choice that every individual has to make, no matter what class they are from. Many can chose to spend money on fast food, coffee and other extravagances, or they can chose to pocket that money to be used to their health and wellness. The great myth and stigma revolving around concierge medicine is that it is “elitist” and for the rich and famous, when, in reality, it is for everyone who chooses to make their health a top priority.

The truth behind the myth is that family physicians are being forced to see too many patients as it is, and patients are suffering from misdiagnosis, spending more money in the long run. When health care reform starts to take effect, and millions more patients are tossed into the mix, and our physician shortage begins to rear its ugly head, things are going to get messy.

With the passage of health care reform, our industry has seen a steady rise in concierge doctors. The overall fear for patients and physicians is that as millions of American’s are seeing doctors for the first time, there just won’t be enough time to see them all. The average of 8 minutes right now that every physician spends with patients will fall to 4 minutes, and the quality of care will fall as well.

To see this article in it’s entirity, visit http://su.pr/2zYBpa or http://www.SignatureMD.com

Connecticut is already facing a serious primary care shortage, and health care reform hasn’t even taken affect yet. Concierge doctors, understand the struggles that every primary care physician goes through with overcrowded offices and too many patients. We’ve all been there at one time or another, and in the end it’s not only the patients that suffer but the doctors as well. Connecticut set out to find the statistics behind what we all know.

According to a survey of the state’s family doctors, internists and pediatricians, nearly one in four Connecticut primary care physicians is refusing to take on new patients. For those doctors who are accepting new patients, there’s an 18-day wait for a routine office visit. And even for patients who have been seeing the same doctor for years and years, their wait time has gone up to more than 13 days before getting an appointment.

“One of the most noteworthy results of this research was to find such a high proportion of primary care physicians aren’t accepting new patients today, before any sort of reform of any kind comes into play,” said Geragosian, communications director at the Connecticut State Medical Society, which publishes Connecticut Medicine. “That suggests a scarcity of access today, and when you add more patients to those panels, then the problem gets worse.”

Researchers took this survey to the next step in Connecticut, examining how many more patients each family physician would need to take on when health care reform passes. They found that in Fairfield County, Connecticut, each primary care doctor would be responsible for an additional 186 patients. In Tolland County, Conn, the figure was 484!

Look at those numbers, than consider the fact that Connecticut has 89.4 active primary care physicians per every 100,000 residents. This is far higher than the national average of only 79 per every 100,000 patients.

The problem gets worse, according to the Connecticut State Medical Society 30 percent of those currently active physicians have seriously considered becoming a salaried hospitalist or making some other career change. These are scary reminders of just how desperate our primary care physician shortage truly is.

Starting today, April Fool’s Day, doctors will be making less money. Yesterday, Congress failed to stop a 21.3% cut in Medicare payments, and physicians around the nation are about to feel the pinch and a doctor’s salary is about to get much worse. It’s been a bunch of politics regarding the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate, and since Congress has failed to come to a solution on the payment formula, the 21.3% cut will take effect today and could last for quite some time since Congress is leaving for their Spring Recess.

I would love to be able to explain this to you, help you understand why doctors are going to be making even less, but even I’m confused. Here’s what they’re saying:

“As they did at the beginning of March, Medicare administrators have told Medicare carriers not to process claims with dates of service of April 1st or afterward for 10 business days.  Medicare officials believe this will minimally disrupt cash flow because they cannot process payments on electronic claims any sooner than 14 calendar days and no sooner than 29 days for paper claims.

 Consequently, they expect that if Congress acts quickly upon its return, Medicare will still meet its normal claims payment deadlines.  To minimize payment disruption, “Participating” physicians may continue to submit all claims on a timely basis at their “usual, customary and reasonable” rates so they are in the cue when claims payments resume.

 For “NonParticipating” physicians the issue is more difficult because a revised fee schedule reflecting the 21.3% cut has not been published.  Consequently, it’s impossible to know exactly what amount to enter as the “Limiting Charge” on the claim.  Consequently, it may be prudent for “NonPAR” physicians to hold off submitting claims until Congress acts to fix this and/or a new fee schedule has been made available (on the Palmetto website – www.palmettogba.com/J1B ). 

If any claims are paid at the lower (21.3%) rate and Congress restores fees retroactively, such claims will be reprocessed automatically to repay the difference.  Organized medicine believes Congress will act quickly to restore the 21.3% cut, but more effort will be needed to push Congress to fix the SGR permanently. “  

I hope that makes sense to you, because ‘consequently’ I have no idea what it all means other than things are getting messy out there and doctors are getting less take-home. With all of the limits that doctors have placed upon them, all of the overhead and extra patients they have, and the knowledge that there are salaried positions out there requiring less work for more pay, our physician shortage is about to hit record numbers.

Want the facts on statistics that matter to doctors? Visit http://www.SignatureMD.com today.

Dr. Chan sees changing healthcare field drastically affecting patient-doctor relationships

Phoenix, AZ February 23, 2010:  Dr. Kevin Chan, a practicing Phoenix physician, recently brought patients together to tell them things in his office were changing. Instead of hustling to see as many patients as possible a week, Dr. Chan had decided to add a new service (concierge medicine) that limits his practice to 600 patients, total. He called this new practice Rejenesis.

“The time has come for an alternate model of healthcare delivery in the 21st century,” Dr. Chan told his patients. “One that changes from the fast-paced, volume-based, assembly-line, impersonalized, and reactive conventional medicine to the time-devoting, quality-driven, patient-centered, individualized, and proactive functional physiologic medicine that focuses on prevention and wellness, addresses the whole person, body, mind and spirit, incorporates complementary and alternative medical therapies, and promotes optimal health far beyond the mere absence of illness.”

With the changing healthcare field, skyrocketing premiums and slow reimbursements patients and doctors alike are seeking market based solutions and alternatives. According to Dr. Chan, misdiagnosis and “symptom suppression” has saturated the medical industry.

“We will focus on the patterns of imbalances rather than the insurance code diagnoses,” Dr. Chan told patients. “We are used to naming the disease, blaming the disease, and then taming the disease with medications that you often take chronically. The reality is that these chronic diseases are often caused by hormone deficiencies, nutritional deficiencies, and toxin excesses. They are not simply caused by medication deficiencies.”

Dr. Chan, with the help of SignatureMD, added a new medical practice that is a bit more personal. Instead of trying to manage the care of 3,000+ patients, SignatureMD physicians focus their care and attention on 300 to 600 patients and improve their patients’ health and enjoyment of life.  By dedicating their attention to a smaller patient population, SignatureMD physicians are able to communicate on a regular basis with patients, something that is lacking with standard practice physicians.

Dr. Chan uses a personalized form of medicine called Functional Physiologic Medicine, which focuses on primary prevention and treatments designed to address underlying causes instead of symptom suppressions. Dr. Chan’s new practice allows for same day appointments, tightly coordinated care with specialists, his personal cell phone information, as well as treatment for visiting friends and family.

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SignatureMD offers patients comprehensive executive physicals, thorough preventative healthcare, same day appointments, on-time extended appointments, house calls, and after-hour availability. These services are normally not provided in standard primary care practices.  

For more information regarding concierge medicine, SignatureMD, or Dr. Kevin Chan, Rejenesis, please visit http://www.SignatureMD.com/chan  or email Dr. Chan at kchan@signaturemd.com. For interviews with Dr. Chan, one of Dr. Chan’s patients, or a SignatureMD doctor, please contact Dr. Chan or Matt Jacobson at matt.jacobson@signaturemd.com.