By: Stephen Fogg
1. Cost to You
Patients are likely to pay more for routine health care if their doctor is employed by a hospital. Hospitals increasingly redirect services away from a physician’s office towards higher cost facilities such as Regional Medical Centers.
2. Quality Time with Your Doctor
Typically, Independent Doctors don’t have daily patient quotas to meet. In turn, spending more time with each patient and understanding their needs. This enhances the quality of care which could lessen misdiagnoses and potentially decrease cost.
3. Independent Practices Provide Personalized Care
When physicians spend more time with patients they better understand their needs. This in turn provides personalized care based on need rather than using an “if this, than that” Healthcare IT formula to diagnoses or treat patients.[1]
4. Insurers Pay Hospitals More Than Independent Practices.
Often 3 or 4 times more for the same services, these costs are passed onto insurance companies that then pass them onto the consumer often resulting in higher insurance premiums.
5. Independent Physicians Are Competitive
By not associating with a Hospital System, Independent Physicians must align themselves with competitive practices to create an urgency in providing quality service to patients.
6. They’re Affiliated
Independent Physicians are often clinically integrated with a larger Hospital System offering hospital admission as needed. By working with an Independent Physician, you decrease the rates of preventable admissions to a hospital thus lowering costs.
7. Doctors Don’t Believe in The Hospital System.
According to a Charlotte Observer report. “75 percent of North Carolina doctors said they disagree “somewhat” or “mostly” with the premise that hospital employment of physicians is a “positive trend likely to enhance quality of care and decrease costs.””[2]
8. Dedicated Members of The Community
While hospitals pay executives millions of dollars to battle bottom line budgets. Independent Doctors are often stalwart members of their community sponsoring local events and helping where they can.
9. It’s Their Business
It’s important that Independent Physicians treat patients with the care they deserve, otherwise they will go elsewhere.
[1] (Lawrence P. Casalino, 2009)
[2] (Ames Alexander, 2015)