Michele Andrews had been seeing her internist in Northampton, Massachusetts, a small city two hours west of Boston, for about 10 years. She was happy with the care, though she started to notice it was becoming harder to get an appointment.
“You’d call and you’re talking about weeks to a month,” Andrews said.
That’s not surprising, as many workplace surveys show the supply of primary care doctors has fallen well below the demand, especially in rural areas such as western Massachusetts. But Andrews still wasn’t prepared for the letter that arrived last summer from her doctor, Christine Baker, at Pioneer Valley Internal Medicine.
“We are writing to inform you of an exciting change we will be making in our Internal Medicine Practice,” the letter read. “As of September 1st, 2024, we will be switching to Concierge Membership Practice.”
Concierge medicine is a business model in which a doctor charges patients a monthly or annual membership fee — even as the patients continue paying insurance premiums, copays, and deductibles. In exchange for the membership fee, doctors limit their number of patients.
Many physicians who’ve made the change said it resolved some of the pressures they faced in primary care, such as having too many patients to see in too short a time.
Andrews was floored when she got the letter. “The second paragraph tells me the yearly fee for joining will be $1,000 per year for existing patients. It’ll be $1,500 for new patients,” she said.
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