Concierge Medicine Today · Research Briefs
Make your next practice decision with evidence, not guesswork.
80 short, sourced briefs for physicians building concierge and membership practices. Free to read. Find the one you need in seconds.
- 80 briefs, all free
- 5 evidence types
- 100% of sources show who funded them
- Independent since 2007
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Talking About Money Without Losing the Relationship
Patient preferences on cost conversations, good faith estimates for self-pay patients, and membership fee clarity.
Make the Patient the Story
A media guide for membership physicians: what reporters want, keeping interviews on patients, and privacy rules.
Physician-to-Physician Referral Relationships
National data on referral communication gaps, how to be the easiest practice to work with, and the legal lines.
Be the Superstar in Your Own Backyard
Community marketing: patient segments, local engagement ideas, physician relationships and a 90-day plan.
Social Media Without Regret
AMA ethics guidance, paid-promotion disclosure, HIPAA enforcement over online replies, and a simple content plan.
Email and Newsletters That Get Read
The stapled Christmas letter problem: what members want from email, HIPAA marketing rules and CAN-SPAM basics.
Being Found When Patients Ask AI
How AI search summaries change how patients find practices, Pew data on clicks, and a local visibility checklist.
Your Website Is the New Front Door
How patients search for a new doctor, what prospective members need to see, plain language and web accessibility.
Story Beats Specs: Testimonials and the Rules
Why patient stories work, the FTC Endorsement Guides, HIPAA authorization and a safe way to collect stories.
Word of Mouth, Done Right
Patient referral programs and the law: OIG guidance, gift limits, patient brokering statutes and what to do instead.
Reviews and Reputation
What patients read in online reviews, the HIPAA settlements over replies, the FTC review rule, and safe reply templates.
Small and Personal
The details patients notice, how endings shape memories of care, and a small-details audit for your office.
Systems Create Behavior
Huddles, standards and habits: AHRQ huddle guidance, a ten-minute agenda and a monthly start-stop-fix review.
Hiring and Training for Hospitality
Hire for attitude and train for skill: interview questions that reveal hospitality and a 90-day training plan.
The Employee Experience Comes First
Why your patients will never feel better cared for than your team does: the service-profit chain and turnover data.
When Things Go Wrong
Service recovery in the membership practice: complaints as an early warning, a recovery script, and when to call counsel.
Gratitude on Repeat
Why handwritten thank-you notes work, how to write one in ninety seconds, and the privacy and gift rules to know.
Words That Work
Scripts, jargon and plain language: a trial on medical abbreviations, teach-back, and phrase swaps for staff.
The Waiting Room Problem
What wait times do to patient trust, why exam-room waits hurt most, and what to say when you are running late.
Thirteen Scenes
Patient journey mapping: the thirteen scenes of a visit, where problems hide, and how to walk the journey yourself.
The Phone Is the Front Door
How patients judge you on the phone, what eats staff phone time, and a simple phone standard for a membership practice.
The First Ten Seconds
Greetings, names and the front desk: what patients want in the first moments, and a standard any team can adopt by Monday.
Known FOR Something
The two questions behind every referral: what you want to be known for, and what patients actually say about you.
Price Is a Result, Not a Strategy
Why cutting your fee to fill a panel usually backfires, and what price-war research, Porter and the Lexus launch say instead.
Culture With Structure
Staff turnover data, huddles, recognition and the tax rule on cash gifts, for owners building culture with structure.
The Membership Agreement
What a concierge membership agreement should cover, the rules behind each clause, and questions for counsel.
After the Deal
What studies show about prices, quality, staffing and autonomy after private equity and MSO deals, and protections to ask for.
Building Your Own MSO
Management fees, fee splitting, profits interests and new state transaction laws for physician-owned MSOs.
Choosing a Compounding Partner
503A vs 503B, essentially-a-copy limits, GLP-1 and peptide status, and a pharmacy diligence checklist.
The Routine-Exam Argument
Testing the claim that routine-exam framing makes concierge fees safe, against Medicare law, OIG settlements and IRS guidance.
Starting From Zero: A New Concierge Practice
What opening a new practice requires in the first 18 months, from business plan and Medicare decision to first members.
Family and Pediatric Membership
What practices take on with family and pediatric memberships, from the Bright Futures schedule to teen privacy.
When Your Patient Is in the Hospital
Staying involved when members are hospitalized: hospitalists, privileges, discharge handoffs and transitional care codes.
Care Across State Lines
State licensure, the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, Medicare and DEA telehealth rules, and the patient who travels.
Raising Your Membership Fee
When and how much to raise a fee, with BLS and CMS cost data, AMA ethics, notice rules and a fee-increase calculator.
Concierge Fees, HSAs and FSAs
What IRS Publications 502 and 969 say, and don’t say, about paying a concierge fee from an HSA or FSA.
Is a Membership Fee Insurance?
When state regulators have treated a retainer or membership fee as insurance, the features they weigh, and a self-check for counsel.
Insurance Contracts and Membership Fees
How payer contracts, hold-harmless clauses, Medicare assignment and the No Surprises Act affect membership fees.
Does Concierge Care Improve Outcomes?
The independent critique, the MDVIP-funded studies, continuity research and satisfaction data, with funding disclosed on each.
Panel Size: What the Evidence Says
What the time studies say about primary care panel size, how delegation changes it, and a calculator for setting a panel target.
Staffing the Membership Practice
Which roles to hire first, what BLS data say they cost, medical assistant scope by state, and why staffing benchmarks are scarce.
Working in Concierge Medicine: Pay and Contracts
Paths into concierge medicine, what federal and survey pay data show, the status of non-compete rules, and a contract checklist.
What We Learned at CMF 2026
Lessons from the 2026 Forum on culture, pricing, panel size, MSOs and compounding, with a table of claims to check before you act.
Concierge, DPC, Hybrid and Beyond: The Models, Compared
The three ways to fund a membership practice, where executive health and add-on lines fit, and the legal anchor for each.
Cybersecurity and Privacy in the AI Era
Risk analysis, AI vendor agreements and the security basics regulators enforce, for small membership practices.
Employers and Membership Medicine
Rising employer costs, the HSA tailwind and the thin savings evidence: what practices should know before contracting.
Succession, Sale or Stay
Internal succession, sale or wind-down: the options, the evidence after outside capital, and due-diligence questions.
Medicare and Membership Medicine
Participating vs. opting out, what membership fees may cover, the enforcement history, and what CMT's polls and Patient Study show.
The Patients Left Behind
Most patients don't follow a converting physician. The ethics, rules and a practical transition standard.
Longevity Medicine: An Evidence Framework
Whole-body MRI, multi-cancer tests, CAC, Lp(a) and biological age clocks, weighed against the evidence.
Does Concierge Medicine Reduce Burnout?
What has been measured about concierge physician burnout, what physicians tell CMT, and why DPC studies don't answer it.
The Membership Fee Benchmark
Why concierge medicine has no published fee benchmark, CMT's estimate, and why DPC's average belongs to a different model.
Counting Concierge
Why estimates of the field's size never match, and the CMT Census Standard for counting it transparently.
The $150 Line: HSAs and DPC
How the 2025 tax law's HSA rule for direct primary care works, and why most concierge practices won't qualify as written.
Answering the Critics
The strongest critical research on cost, mortality and equity, read fairly, with what the field still needs to prove.
The AI-Informed Patient
A third of adults now ask chatbots about their health. How membership practices can become the trusted interpreter.
AI in the Membership Practice
What the 2025 and 2026 randomized trials show about AI scribes and inbox tools, and what that means for a small-panel practice.
Own the Relationship, Lead the Care
Why physicians who share the work may keep the relationship longer, with lessons from primary care research and the subscription businesses patients already know.
MSOs and Concierge Medicine
Why concierge physicians partner with MSOs and private equity, what the evidence shows, and CMT's position statement.
The DPC Question
Why CMT's NP and PA series treats direct primary care as a separate subject, with the evidence on DPC's employer and independent paths.
The Clinicians in the Middle
Where NPs and PAs work, how burned out they are, and the evidence for designing them into membership practices.
Four Countries, One Pressure Pattern
Physician strain and NP/PA deployment in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia, compared honestly.
NPs and PAs: The Future of Primary Care
Why nurse practitioners and physician assistants may be the future of primary care, and why they're already thriving inside concierge and membership practices.
Exit Readiness Assessment
A framework for physicians thinking about finishing well, from succession planning to practice valuation.
Sleep Health and Self-Care
What the evidence says about sleep and self-care for physicians, and why it matters for the sustainability of a practice.
2026 Annual Report: The Economics of Concierge Medicine
CMT's yearly look at the financial fundamentals behind sustainable concierge and membership practices.
The Future of Membership-Based Healthcare
Where the evidence, not the hype, suggests membership-based care is headed next.
History and Evolution of Concierge Medicine
Tracing the model from its origins to its current form, and the inflection points along the way.
Concierge Medicine Marketing Playbook
A practical review of what responsible, non-hype marketing looks like for concierge and membership practices.
GLP-1 Marketing
How GLP-1 marketing claims are shaping patient expectations, and what practices should know before adopting the messaging.
AI and Your Doctor
An honest look at where artificial intelligence is, and isn't, changing the physician-patient relationship.
The CMT Patient Study
Original CMT research into why patients choose, stay with, or leave concierge and membership-based practices.
What Is Concierge Medicine?
A clear, sourced definition of concierge medicine, and how it differs from adjacent membership-based models.
Hospitals, Health Systems and Concierge Medicine
How hospitals and health systems are engaging with concierge and membership models, and why.
Specialties and Concierge Medicine
Which medical specialties are moving into membership-based care, and what they have in common.
Associations and Member Orgs
A reference map of the associations and member organizations active in concierge and membership medicine today.
Growth Math
How industry growth figures are calculated, and where "practices" and "physicians" get conflated.
Patience Is a Skill
How high-performing practices train and reinforce patience, rather than leaving it to chance.
It's All About the Access, 'Til It's Not
A look at luxury and bespoke practices in membership medicine, and where the access promise holds up under real conditions.
Camera Ready
Why physicians lose credibility in media appearances, and what the research suggests they do differently.
Not sure where to start?
Pick your situation. Read four briefs.
I'm exploring concierge medicine
Understand the models and the first decisions before you commit.
I want more of the right members
Grow by reputation and referrals, without hype or legal risk.
I want patients to rave about us
Turn ordinary visits into the experience members talk about.
I need to get the rules right
Medicare, contracts and privacy, explained before you act.
Why these briefs exist
Concierge medicine is full of confident numbers. Few of them show their work.
Growth figures that mix up practices and physicians. Fee “averages” with no method. Marketing claims dressed up as research. When you’re deciding on pricing, Medicare status or your next hire, a wrong number can cost you a year.
We’ve covered this field since 2007, and we understand how hard it is to tell evidence from opinion. So every brief shows its sources, labels each finding by the type of evidence behind it, and discloses who funded every source. CMT doesn’t favor one practice model over another.
Michael TetreaultEditor-in-Chief, Concierge Medicine Today
Five evidence types
- Clinical Trial EvidenceBest for cause and effect
- Population DataBest for trends at scale
- Practice InsightBest for real-world experience
- Industry ResearchBest for early signals and operating data
- Policy and LawBest for what is required
Labels describe the type of evidence, not its value. Each type answers a different question.
How we verify our research →Learn
Read the evidence behind a trend or claim.
Build
Apply it to your own practice with the tools in each brief.
Lead
Share the reasoning with your team and community.
Build a practice your patients talk about, and that lasts.
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Educational only. Not medical, legal, tax, financial or accounting advice. © 2007-2026 Concierge Medicine Today, LLC.