Boutique Medicine

You know the saying, "money buys everything" (well, most things). Now money is buying a doctor’s time. According to the WSJ article, For a Fee, Doctors With Time to Listen, there are many boutique practices popping up all across the nation where doctors devote more time to each patient--- for a fee. Annual memberships vary but the doctors in these boutiques have a select number of patients. For example, one doctor used to treat up to 35 patients in one day (and had approximately 4,000 patients). After he started his boutique practice, he only treated from 8 to 15 in one day (and has approximately 425 patients). The doctors claim they get to spend more time actually practicing medicine and not dealing with insurance claims--- but there is also a financial plus to all of this. None of the doctor’s can deny they were also driven into boutique medicine because of the fewer patients, fewer hours, and more pay.

However, one person was quoted in the article as saying regarding boutique medicine, “it's there because the current health-care system is broken and we actually have to pay people to talk to us."

This is very true.

If there wasn’t a demand to get more time with the doctor’s this practice would not be growing. Has our healthcare system gotten so bad that it has come down to paying extra just so doctors could spend more time (other than the 5 minutes we usually spend with them during the doctor’s visits?)

Apparently so.