They attend to the patient and not to the clock, and many are building substantial practices, especially those in urban areas with intense managed care insurance penetration. Timothy J. Murphy is the head of QVS Technology Group, a health care consulting firm in Des Plaines, Illinois, that assists in the establishment of alternative medical practices. Murphy told the New York Times that these changes are related to significant declines in insurance reimbursement fees for physicians. The result is a tiering effect, where the best doctors are doing the private stuff and doctors unable to succeed in those things will provide the public service care. We have created an incentive for everyone who can to get out of low-margin businesses, and that could have enormous policy implications.
Patients are willing to pay out of pocket for services they value.
Patients and their families even will pay for assistance with death and dying, as the Wall Street Journal reported last year. Entirely new organizations have popped up in California and other states to help people deal with death. With names like Home Funeral Ministry, Zen Hospice, the Chalice of Repose Project, and the Natural Death Care Project, the organizations are helping people manage death by taking it out of the hospital and allowing it to take place in homes and hospices, where the dying person can be surrounded by family and friends. People are searching for a good death, and they're not finding it in hospitals or nursing homes, where more than 70 percent of deaths now occur. Even private commuter autopsy services are popping up.