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Apr 21, 2006 -- New ways doctors deliver service
Are you satisfied when you go to the doctors office? Do you typically wait a half hour or more to actually see the doctor? Part of it stems from the fact that doctors lose revenue to insurance companies and must schedule as many patients as possible to make money. So what can you do? Well, some doctors have gone the route of concierge medicine. Basically, you pay the doctor an annual fee or usually about 1,500 a year. The doctor takes a certain number of patients and he or she is available to patients 24 hours a day. The doctor makes money on the annual fee and does not deal with insurance companies at all. The other route is to change doctors practices so that they do functions electronically and reduce overhead as much as possible. Fewer people are hired to help in the office and doctors see fewer people to accommodate for emergency appoints. The software these doctors use schedules only one-third of the available appointments in a day. That leaves room for people who come in with urgent conditions and situations and no one has to wait. It can lead to lower income for doctors, but it doesnt have to.
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