A new study released this month verifies what most doctors know by observation: Healthcare needs are not evenly distributed. To frame it another way, a percentage of the population disproportionately accounts for total healthcare cots.

But a movement in health care called concierge medicine, which has grown organically over the last 5 years by 500% percent, might offer a solution.

Research published in the January issue of Health Affairs showed that a community-based lifestyle intervention program could prevent nearly 885,000 cases of type 2 diabetes and save $5.7 billion over the next 25 years.

“The rising burden of type 2 diabetes in the United States has made its prevention a priority for public health agencies, healthcare professionals, private insurers and community organizations,” says Xiaohui Zhou, PhD, a health economist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta and one of the authors of the study. Therefore, implementation of a community-wide prevention program for type 2 diabetes could improve health and reduce healthcare costs over time.

A substantial majority of physicians are ready now to sign onto a concierge medicine.

A survey of 501 doctors, released Dec. 13, 2011 by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, found that 64% believe the concierge medicine practice, also called a retainer or personalized medicine practice, had the greatest chance of financial success in the age of health system reform.

Only 39% said this of a small single specialty group that contracts with multiple plans and hospitals.

Why are doctors embracing concierge medicine?

Radiation is a complex substance; we know its particles can kill cancer cells and yet, in high levels of exposure it is also is a matter that can poison, and ultimately, kill us. With the devastating 8.9 earthquake that struck Japan last Friday, new fears about radiation’s danger, especially to Californians, are making this typically mysterious substance a reality.

When word got out that harmful amounts of radiation were leaking from the four reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, people reacted in terror. We’ve come to learn in recent days that there is an imminent

A seismic shift is occurring! Not in California or any of the regions that lie within the famed “Ring of Fire”, but in healthcare. Many primary care physicians are scrambling to decide what—if any—their next move should be, while others remain frozen in place, unsure and unable to chart a course, hoping and praying that “this too shall pass.” Problem is, waiting and hoping may lead to nowhere, when in fact, viable options exist to move a practice to the next level.

Here at SignatureMD, we’ve developed what we believe is a highly intelligent model for primary care doctors, one that offers the highest return and lowest risk.