Concierge DENTISTRY

Thirty to forty-five Million New Patients
have been granted freedom from worry about the cost of health care with the passage of the health care reform in March of 2010.

The changes that were started with the Reform Act are beginning to become clearer.  The rapid expansion of the number of patients entitled to care has not been matched a proportional increased in the supply of medical care providers.

More people seeking care from the same number of Docs will stress the ability of the health care system to respond.   We are finding the health system is slower and less responsive to our needs.

It’s easier to mandate a new Entitlement than it is to produce a new Provider.
The Entitlement requires a mere stroke of the lawmaker’s pen.  But, It can take over eight years to get a high school graduate though college and medical school.

Medical education has become more expensive.  And Sally Mae has been an open-handed lender.  Docs have enormous debt after graduation that makes it economically unrealistic to borrow yet more money to set up a solo practitioner office. 

And the new entities known as  Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) are now going to be the conduits through which the newly reformed health care will be dispensed.  And ACO’s will be the employer for the newly minted, indebted Docs.  ACO’s are the organizational reason the solo practitioner will disappear.

Future Health Care Workers will be largely employees, paid by the Financial Intermediaries health care reform is injecting between you and your doctor.   Health Worker security will be that it is not fair that their incomes be subject to how you feel about the care you have received. 

This is the business model that has worked so well for the US Postal Service.

Dental Care has been temporarily overlooked by Washington.  And truth to tell, about half of Americans only seek out a dentist when driven by the necessity of pain.  There has been no rising clamor by constituents asking their congresspersons, “We need Dental”.

Half of Americans appreciate and desire more dental care and the other half wouldn’t come even if it is free.

And when Washington isn’t part of Dental Care it works better, more local and responsive to the our patient’s needs.

Compared to Medicine, Dental Care is like having a Concierge smoothing the path to health.  One cannot foresee how long the present condition can endure, but for now,  going for medical care is like staying overnight at a hostel and , dental care is like checking into the Ritz – Concierge and all.

And you have found Concierge Dentistry.