What’s Up Doc? Columnist Blasts New Concierge Service That Doctors are Setting Up
Our veteran political columnist Ken Frydman is none too pleased that his longtime doctor and nurses are now part of a “concierge service” that wants to charge him $4,200 a year to join.
The membership development coordinator from Concierge Choice Physicians called one recent evening to inform me that, come April 1, my primary care physician of 30 years will “convert his practice to a full concierge service.”
For an annual fixed-fee of $4,200, or slightly more than $350 a month if I break it up into 12 payments, I can join the “concierge membership program” and maintain a three-decade-long relationship with my internist, his nurses and office staff. Not incidentally, he’s a “Castle Connolly Top Doctor” and “internal medicine specialist”. Doctor-bragging is a sport on the Upper West Side.
Should I decline to pay the fee and join the membership program, I’ll have to find a doctor who isn’t a concierge. You know, a doctor.
The last time I paid a concierge, he got me tickets to “Hamilton”. Medical concierge benefits — known as “conveniences” — include same-day appointments, 24/7 physician availability and the doctor’s private number. I already have my doctor’s cell. We’re old friends. So, naturally, I asked the membership development coordinator for a discount.
“Can you do four grand”?
She nervously dodged the question-and-answer, but will email me “another concierge services brochure.” Seems she’s emailed and snail-mailed me multiple copies of that brochure, all of which I apparently ignored. Guess I wasn’t looking for a concierge.
Doctors have long had a tough time getting reimbursed by private insurance companies, Medicaid and Medicare.
No wonder small medical practices are acquired and rolled up by medical center behemoths. My internist and his physician partners sold their practice to Mt. Sinai Health System. Lenox Hill Hospital is owned by Northwell Health, the largest private employer in the state of New York. Patient care is driven by the bottom line.
Unlike normal people, I look forward to my annual physical to see my old doctor buddy. We schmooze and swap jokes during every checkup. We laugh when he makes me cough or checks my prostate. I’d miss the comfort, familiarity and trust of those visits.
Longtime patients deserve special concierge consideration. We should be grandfathered in. But don’t worry about me, at least not this year: I got in under the concierge membership wire by scheduling my annual physical on March 28.
Thanks, doc.
Ken Frydman is CEO of Source Communications, a strategic and tactical communications firm in Manhattan.