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March 19, 2008, 9:45 am
Flag as Inappropriate Relaxin  

What do you think? Boutique medicine is where a patient pays a doctor a large annual fee to be available to them at anytime 24/7 360. The doctor in turn agrees to not carry more than X amount of patients a year in order to give each patient individualized, total attention. This is obviously a service line developed to cater to the wealthy population. Is this ethical? Doctors scraping the cream off the top?

I don’t think there is anything wrong with practicing boutique medicine. Doctors are allowed choose how they want to practice, and someone has got to provide the rich with healthcare. This would be a excellent for senior citizens with severe problems, to bad something like this is not included in their coverage. As long as our system is based on a capitalistic structure, we will continue to see these kinds of “cater to the rich” boutiques.

The same thing is true with Abulatory Surgery Centers and Specialty Hospitals. Although, specialty hospitals can't always provide quality care as well as a larger hospital.

I have to say, I don't agree with this kind of skimming. These leaves non paying or Medicaid patients for other physicians to pick up. A lot of times you'll have a doc that provides x amount of charity care. But if they don't have other paying patients to pick up for that free care, they will go out of business.

Sounds like a Boutique Dr. would be an expensive service to pay for. Do you still pay for x-rays, and blood tests?

The market will dictate how successful such a practice, boutique medicine, will be.

I don't have any issues with it as I think there are sufficient doctors to go around.

Having a doctor at your call 24/7 is nice but I'm sure it costs a lot and I doubt if insurance covers it. Most of us can't afford anything like that and we're just happy if a doctor looks our way at an ER.

The rich get what they want and the rest of us just struggle along.

I always thought a person became a doctor to help others not to help themselves get rich.