Cost Estimates of Private Practice Standalones vs. Consolicare

I will try to provide an estimated cost comparison for the average cost of a stand-alone private practice start-up versus start-up costs per "entity" as a member of the Consolicare community. This is a rough copy and reductions in expenses from a one-entity private practice to Consolicare will be based on shared resources and integrated infosystems.

A Trend of Consolidation

The trend of outpatient healthcare consolidation has been occurring silently throughout the past 8 or so years. The following article in the New York Times has done an excellent job in summarizing the trend: 


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/health/policy/26docs.html.

Expert analysts claim that doctors are "facing rising costs and fearing they will not be able to recruit junior partners — are selling their practices and moving into salaried jobs, too."

The main benefit and concern, as iterated in the article, are that "bigger health care organizations can provide better, more coordinated care. But the intimacy of longstanding doctor-patient relationships may be going the way of the house call." So it seems that there would be some kind of trade-off between efficiency and being personable. I find this to be a paradox, however, as efficiency would free up time to better talk to your patients. When a patient enters a Consolicare, I want that patient to feel like a part of the family. Each appointment should, in time, feel like a visit with a distant relative. Because of high switching costs (very time-intensive), it is much more likely that a new patient stays with us for many years. In addition, the patient will, by nature of the business model, schedule multiple appointments each visit. For these two reasons it is vitally important that that patient feel comfortable throughout the visit.