Bioethics Discussion Blog: Primary Care Boutiques and Healthcare Reform

REMINDER: I AM POSTING A NEW TOPIC ABOUT ONCE A WEEK OR PERHAPS TWICE A WEEK. HOWEVER, IF YOU DON'T FIND A NEW TOPIC POSTED, THERE ARE AS OF MARCH 2013 OVER 900 TOPIC THREADS TO WHICH YOU CAN READ AND WRITE COMMENTS. I WILL BE AWARE OF EACH COMMENTARY AND MAY COME BACK WITH A REPLY.

TO FIND A TOPIC OF INTEREST TO YOU ON THIS BLOG, SIMPLY TYPE IN THE NAME OR WORDS RELATED TO THE TOPIC IN THE FIELD IN THE LEFT HAND SIDE AT TOP OF THE PAGE AND THEN CLICK ON “SEARCH BLOG”. WITH WELL OVER 900 TOPICS, MOST ABOUT GENERAL OR SPECIFIC ETHICAL ISSUES BUT NOT NECESSARILY RELATED TO ANY SPECIFIC DATE OR EVENT, YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO FIND WHAT YOU WANT. IF YOU DON’T PLEASE WRITE TO ME ON THE FEEDBACK THREAD OR BY E-MAIL DoktorMo@aol.com

IMPORTANT REQUEST TO ALL WHO COMMENT ON THIS BLOG: ALL COMMENTERS WHO WISH TO SIGN ON AS ANONYMOUS NEVERTHELESS PLEASE SIGN OFF AT THE END OF YOUR COMMENTS WITH A CONSISTENT PSEUDONYM NAME OR SOME INITIALS TO HELP MAINTAIN CONTINUITY AND NOT REQUIRE RESPONDERS TO LOOK UP THE DATE AND TIME OF THE POSTING TO DEFINE WHICH ANONYMOUS SAID WHAT. Thanks. ..Maurice

FEEDBACK,FEEDBACK,FEEDBACK! WRITE YOUR FEEDBACK ABOUT THIS BLOG, WHAT IS GOOD, POOR AND CONSTRUCTIVE SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT TO THIS FEEDBACK THREAD

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Primary Care Boutiques and Healthcare Reform

During these days when the issue of healthcare reform is at the table of public interest and debate within the United States and where there are almost 50 million people who do not have health insurance, there seems to be a topic in healthcare which has not been discussed or considered within the reform packages. That topic is the issue of luxury primary care practice and clinics. These are the so-called medical “boutiques” which provide for a retainer special medical and associated service which would not be available to other patients. This would include besides a more luxurious clinic environment, more ready access to a physician year round by cell phone or pager, shorter waiting times for a visit, more rapid access to specialist attention, house calls and perhaps easier access for certain vaccines or diagnostic scanning. If with the added patient loads when these 50 million people are able to be able to afford a private physician, the numbers of primary care physicians will become a limiting factor. Boutique medicine practice may only reduce the numbers of physicians available for standard care.


I suggest that visitors to this blog who are interested in learning more about “boutique medicine” should go to the thread I started May 4 2007 “Where Have All Those Doctors Gone?: Coming Back in Boutique Medicine?"
There are links on that thread to additional information on the subject. Also, here is a link to chapter titled “Family Medicine Should Encourage the Development of Luxury Practices: Negative Position” by Martin Donohoe in the book “Ideological Debates in Family Medicine”.


There have been concerns expressed beyond reduction of physicians for standard primary care practice specifically regarding the effect of these boutique practices to raise the cost of all medical care and increase exposure to unnecessary and potentially harmful screening tests simply as a service to the boutique patients.
What do you think? Hopefully, physicians who participate in these services could also participate in the discussion here. ..Maurice.

1 Comments:

At Tuesday, September 01, 2009 10:08:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Some of these so called medical
boutiques entail executive clinics
for ceo's,at a cost of course. Look
further and you see total body exams that patients recieve at
malls for $895.00.
Thats cheap considering a Cat scan of the abdomen and pelvis is
about $3800.00. Patients can generally get these total body exams without a physicians order.
More concerning is that these total body scans give more radiation exposure that civilians
recived on the outskirts of nagasaki after the atomic bomb explosion of ww2.
Medical care is simply evolving
with the times as more and more patients look for convience.

PT

 

Post a Comment

<< Home