Concierge Medicine: Addressing Patient Burnout & Physician Burnout

“Patient Burnout … is a cancer growing in our healthcare culture that few have the courage or want to treat with hospitality and customer service. Patient burnout plagues our communities. We don’t look forward to seeing a Doctor or even know the medical staff by name like we used to. If I have to go to a Doctor’s office where he/she has to look at my medical chart every time I visit the practice, that’s not okay with me. Instead, we as Patients put on an invisible suit of armor and we prepare for a metaphorical battle about our rights, the cost, our time and more. In the majority of medical office environments you and I may visit today or tomorrow, there is rarely anyone or anything advocating for the Patient other than the Doctor. And that is unremarkable. I want a Doctor [and culture] that is remarkable and that would bring my family and I back again and again. I want to brag about my Doctor to others. I want my Doctor’s office to be as inviting to my family and I as having a conversation with an old friend in our living room. Today, that is rare. I understand that isn’t everyone’s expectation of their Doctor’s office and that’s okay. But for those in healthcare that would rather stand in the back of a room with their arms crossed or sit behind a keyboard and dissect the premise of patient burnout and targeted solutions your peers are trying to use to treat this common complaint and want to do something about it and then say they're elitist or ‘this is just not how we’ve always done it’, they miss the point and bury the pronouncement of the cure to patient burnout which is ... we need more medical environments and entrepreneurial Physicians that also desire to curate healthy staff cultures and each day wake up and try to work in a medical office model that marries the Hippocratic Oath to the Golden Rule. It just so happens that some in Concierge Medicine are already doing that and I think that is remarkable and moreover, worth remarking to others about.”

~Editor-in-Chief, Concierge Medicine Today, the industry's trade publication, est. 2007.