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?

For two reasons, says Matt Jacobson, CEO, SignatureMD, a leading provider of concierge medicine to physicians, and patients. “Concierge medicine offers doctors both financial and professional rewards. Because patients pay a retainer, there’s a plannable source of income for doctors that doesn’t depend on the vagaries of insurance reimbursements, including Medicare.

“That financial confidence is especially important to primary care physicians – family doctors, internists, pediatricians – who despite being on the front line of prevention in our health care system, only earn a fraction of  what M.D. specialists make,” he said.

Equally important, however, are the professional rewards that doctors receive when they convert their private practices to concierge medicine. “Typically, a primary care physician must see 1,000 or more patients a year in order to break even. That translates into a dizzying and exhausting schedule for the doctor where patient visits must be limited to 10 minute or less,” says Jacobson.

Indeed, according to an article in The New York Times, publicly traded H.M.O.’s in the 1990s “began restricting doctors to an average seven-minute ‘encounter’ with each customer. This apparently kept shareholders happy. But it reduced the doctor-patient relationship to a financial concept in a business school term paper.”

Dr. John Calleja, M.D., an internist in Key West, Florida for 34 years, recently converted his practice to concierge medicine.  “My philosophy has always been to do my best to give each of his patients all the time it takes, no matter how long, to deal with their health issues.  But I was finding that I was running out of hours, and stamina, in the day to provide the standard of patient care I wanted to,” he said.

His choice was to either change how he was providing care or close the office and retire.  With Key West already suffering from a shortage of doctors and many of those planning to opt out of Medicare further limiting patient choices, leaving his patients without any way to continue to receive high-quality care was not an option.

Dr. Calleja has now successfully converted his practice model to concierge medicine, using SignatureMD’s unique “market segmentation” approach to personalized medicine.