Retainer Medicine

Retainer medicine is practiced by physicians who have decided to drop out of all third party payer programs. These practitioners have offered a limited number of patients the opportunity to pay a fixed annual fee in exchange for premium services and amenities. Retainers doctors generally limit, by a drastic amount, the number of patients, which they will service. This makes the most sense for primary care physicians and those specialists who have ongoing and regular relationships with their patients. Many retainer practices also provide amenities which patients often do not get when Medicare or an insurer pays the doctor, including access to the physician’s cell phone, e-mail correspondence, same-day appointments, and plenty of face time during appointments. However, whatever the specifics of a particular practice may be, the key that defines “retainer medicine” is that the doctor works for the patient. It has become impossible in practical terms and in ethical terms for traditional primary care physicians to fight the pervasive pressures upon them to ration healthcare at the bedside. To escape this fate, they must become either specialists or a retainer practitioner. That is, primary care physicians must choose between remaining in a system that ruthlessly pushes them toward a practice of bedside rationing or, one way or another, getting out of traditional primary care medicine altogether. Retainer medicine restores the professional integrity of medical practice, and re-establishes a doctor-patient relationship in which the physician can again assume the duty of a true advocate. It is perhaps the only remaining means to restore the foundational medical ethic of always placing the patient first. Retainer fees let one practice handle more patients by phone or email.

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Personalized Medicine

Personalized medicine is a medical model emphasizing the systematic use of information about an individual patient to select or optimize that patient's preventative and therapeutic care. Personalized medicine is the products and services that leverage the science of genomics and proteomics and capitalize on the trends toward wellness and consumerism to enable tailored approaches to prevention and care. Over the past century, medical care has centered on standards of care based on epidemiological studies of large cohorts. Personalized medicine