Should You Offer Concierge Healthcare?
Patients are fed up with long waits and short appointments with their healthcare providers. Doctors are frustrated and tired of fighting insurance companies to get paid.
And that’s why concierge wellness — also known as direct care — has become more popular in recent years. For doctors and patients, it’s the way to bypass hurdles created by health insurance companies and offer a better care experience — and better quality of life for the practitioner as well.
Should you switch your practice to a concierge or direct care model?
How Concierge Healthcare Works
Concierge medicine is also known as direct care or retainer medicine. In exchange for a monthly retainer, the doctor provides longer visits with shorter wait times.
Direct care cuts the health insurance company out, eliminating the need for the care provider and the patient to file health insurance claims.
Some patients may choose to carry a high-deductible health insurance plan to cover any services that are not included in the direct care fee. Those can be testing, additional procedures, and medications.
Physician Heal Thyself (and get a life!)
When you are focused on building a practice, it’s easy to become overworked and chronically stressed. Add in the frustrations of working with insurers, and seeing more patients than you can comfortably handle, and you are headed for burnout — or worse.
Concierge medicine allows you as a practitioner to offer an expanded healthcare experience to your patients.
With a concierge model, you can spend more time with each patient instead of rushing through each appointment. This allows you to get to know your patients better and offer more personalized care plans.
Since you won’t have to fight insurance companies for reimbursements that they may or may not pay out, you will know what you will be earning for your services. And you will get paid after caring for patients.
Monthly retainers or membership fees mean that you can take on fewer patients and spend more time on their care — which helps build a better doctor-patient relationship and can improve the quality of care you offer.
Shifting your practice to a concierge model can help improve your own quality of life and work-life balance.
Give Patients a Better Experience
One of the top complaints among patients in the traditional care model is that they don’t get enough time with their doctor during their visits.
Because insurance payouts are increasingly smaller, doctors need to squeeze more patient appointments into each day. In turn, this increases wait time and decreases the actual time that doctors can spend with patients.
With concierge care, you can spend more time with each patient, get to know them better, and offer more preventative care.
Your patients will appreciate that they can see you when they need your help. And they will likely get better outcomes when they know how to be more proactive in their own care — to get and stay healthy.
Offer Well WorldⓇ for More Value
You can include Well World as a value-added part of your concierge care model. The Well World app can serve as a personalized connection, exclusive access, and secure communication for your patients and members.
Assign your patient a plan from Well World’s nutrition plan library and recommend supplements from Designs for HealthⓇ. Patients can then order supplements through Well World and have them dropshipped directly to their homes — no need to supply them in your office or manage inventory.
With the Well World app, you can have your patients set wellness goals for movement, sleep, water intake, and meditation minutes for each day. The app lets them track their progress, and you can see what and how often they track through your Well World practitioner portal.
Simplify Patient Communication
Well World’s practitioner portal allows you to monitor your patients between visits so you can give them a more personalized experience. You can see what they’re tracking in their mobile app and know instantly where they are succeeding and where they need more support.
Well World’s HIPAA-compliant text and video messaging enables you to communicate directly with your patients for a higher-touch level of service. You or your staff can follow up with patients right through the app between visits. You can also use the tracked metrics that your patients provide through their app to adjust their care plan more effectively.
Well World can help patients feel like you are right there supporting them on their health journey. You get better insights to help patients, and patients get better overall care.