Kareo and the American Association of Private Physicians conducted a survey to examine alternative payment and practice models for independent physicians.
The survey includes responses from 766 clinicians, practice managers and practice owners surveyed in the second half of last year. Twenty-six percent of the respondents were in private concierge medicine membership practices and 74 percent were in conventional fee-for-service practices.
The survey showed:
1. Almost 70 percent of the physicians said they wanted to spend more time with patients, which is why they converted to a direct primary care or membership practice model. About 41 percent cited improved work/life balance and 40 percent said they made the switch to separate from the insurance payer system.
2. Three-quarters of the physicians in the fee-for-service model spend 30 minutes or less with each patient and almost 60 percent have a 1,000-plus member patient panel.
3. The physicians in a concierge medicine membership or direct primary care payment model often reported a patient panel of less than 1,000 and 79 percent spent an average of 30 to 60 minutes with their patients.
4. The fee-for-service physicians reported working on average about six more hours per week than the concierge or direct-pay physicians. The conventional physicians also spent around 12 hours on administrative work while the concierge medicine and direct-pay physicians reported spending 10 hours or less on administrative tasks.
5. Almost two-thirds of the physicians in the concierge medicine membership model said the cost for membership was less than $2,000 per year; 32 percent said they have less than 25 percent of their patients in membership. Thirty percent said they have all patients in membership.
6. More than half — 57 percent — of the concierge membership physicians participate in Medicare and 54 percent participate in health plans in-network. Fifty eight percent of the concierge medicine physicians said they participate in out-of-network health plans.
7. Thirty-five percent of the conventional practices said their biggest challenge is remaining financially viable while 38 percent of the direct primary care private practices said recruiting new patients was the biggest struggle.
8. Among private practice physicians, 23 percent use telemedicine, compared with 8 percent of conventional practice. Forty-two percent of the private practices have plans to grow telemedicine and 4 percent plan to switch to telemedicine entirely.