This is a somewhat dated article (2005) that lays out the playing field for a layman, but has a somewhat negative recommendation for the US market that is somewhat outdated (from The JAOA • Vol 105 • No 11 • November 2005 • 515-520)
http://www.jaoa.org/cgi/content/full/105/11/515

A perspective from a physician who “had reached the end of his own rope…” from a Houston Press Article from 2007 about Dr. Shannon Ray Schrader who was a noted AIDS doctor that had to cut back his practice and his patients, (using a MD-VIP Model)
http://www.houstonpress.com/2007-09-06/news/pay-to-play/

Another Physician perspective from a March 2008 Wall Street Journal article by By Dr. Benjamin Brewer, M.D. who details the “hard facts” about how 47 million medically uninsured Americans are going to obtain care from a Primary Care supply side industry that needs to add 140,000 more physicians…
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120647936859463451.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

And an interesting third party viewpoint from a first year law student at Harvard on a blog where he attempted to “de-construct” the concierge care marketplace for better understanding by the Reader. Read through the full blog post and be sure to read the comment by Dr. Steven D. Knope, M.D. who started one of the first Concierge Care clinics 8 years ago and recently wrote a book on the topic.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jancer/2008/04/04/the-primary-care-problem-consolidation-unplugging-and-concierge-car/

M. Schmidt
Ensemble Ventures, LLC
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeschmidtev

In my opinion, this is where the real Health 3.0 service innovations are going to occur and where the separate technology and services battlegrounds of Web 3.0, Social Networks 3.0, and Mobile 3.0 are going to converge. It’s the “perfect storm” playing field of technologies, politics, and economics rolling out in front of us.

This market development has been around now for the last 4-5 years and is also know as “Concierge Care” or “Concierge Medicine” or “Retainer Medicine” or “Boutique Medicine”. Some even call them “Executive Health Programs” or “Platinum Practices”. What ever label you call it the end result is that it’s going to be a major topic this next year as the entire Healthcare services marketplace is undergoing a radical upheaval and shakeout as both top-down and bottom-up models for providing and paying for healthcare services is going to be tested marketed and promoted.

In the past these services have always been linked to “preferential patients” who have the ability to pay, (like what MD-VIP has been doing for years): http://www.mdvip.com

However, through the innovation of internet social networking and client management, crowd sourcing, and the power of membership models, companies like Qliance will have the ability to bring this high-end model to the middle class, and there will be more to come.

In today’s world where physicians’ incomes are being squeezed from many angles (lower reimbursements from insurance payors, higher operating costs – like malpractice premiums, greater administrative costs, delayed payments and claims processing hassles, etc.), many physicians are looking for ways to improve their income levels and reduce their workloads.

As a result, many physicians have been compelled to try and put in more hours to see more patients in an attempt to stabilize their practice’s economics. Unfortunately, many find there is just not enough hours in a day to do this and the sad fact is their economic condition continues to worsen.

Now, a growing number of physicians have responded in a different way. In what many would consider to be a drastic move, a pioneering group of physicians have decided to drop out of all third party payor programs (including Medicare and private insurers). Instead, these practitioners are now offering a limited number of patients the opportunity to pay a fixed annual fee in exchange for “healthcare services and amenities.” with the promise of immediate scheduling and more detailed care.

This movement is flying directly in the face of the top-down government-led and controlled centralized healthcare model that Washington is trying to create, but will in fact create a larger base of potential business and innovation at the local level because there is going to be an entire healthcare IT services “eco-system” that is going to be developed to support this new grassroots models and relationship between Patients, Physician’s and their Pharmacists because they are going to distance themselves from Payors, Providers, and Pharmaceutical Companies. This is going to help widen the economic reality “gap” between the two sides of this six-sided healthcare rubic cube. Patients in collaboration with their Physicians and Pharmacists that will move away from institutionalized healthcare providers, (with large budgets and overhead), insurance providers (with their high-cost and compliance requirements), and pharmaceutical companies (who keep pushing “designer drugs” and their high costs) on a growing suspicious consumer.

As an entrepreneur developing a new mobile social networking and digital data acquisition and control solution for managing disease populations, (through my company HubNetworks Solutions) I welcome the developments of this grass roots care model and look forward to working with companies like Qliance in the future.