What Concierge Medicine Can Learn from Plastic Surgeons
Ever heard of concierge medicine? For those of you not familiar, this is a medical practice that runs as a cash-only business, accepting no insurance. But in return for the patient’s acceptance of this streamlined, insurance-avoiding business model, your doctor is at your beck and call! That’s where the concierge idea comes in. Your doctor, […]
Looking for Cosmetic Surgery Prices?
Why is it so hard to get cosmetic surgery prices before going in for a consultation with your board certified plastic surgeon? You worry it’s gonna cost a lot of money so you’d like to know what you’re in for before wasting your time on a consultation. If you were thinking about buying a house […]
Connecticut: The Wild West of Med Spas
Well the verdict is in. The Connecticut legislature passed a bill to increase safety in med spas and Governor Malloy of Connecticut vetoed it. Per the Boston Globe, “in a veto statement issued Friday, the Democrat said he was concerned the bill required physicians to perform all initial assessments and perform or supervise […]
Glazed Donut Sandwich with Bacon and a Fried Egg
If you’ve been reading my blog over time, you’ll notice that aside from plastic surgery, I touch on topics related to health care in general and the economics of health care. Specifically, I’m interested in how to reduce the costs of medicine through free market forces to drive down costs, i.e., competition and price transparency. […]
Top 5 MOST Expensive Plastic Surgery Procedures
As promised, here’s our next installment of our “Top 5” series. Before reading below about the Top 5 Most Expensive Plastic Surgery Procedures, you can look back in our blog about the Top 5 Least Expensive Procedures by clicking here. Here are the top 5 most expensive plastic surgery procedures as determined by […]
Health Plans in the New Health Care Exchanges
If you’ve been keeping up with the health care debate you’ll notice that Republicans are predicting the demise of Obamacare and Democrats are predicting it to be the “second coming”. The debate is coming to a fever pitch again because the new health care exchanges are about to come to fruition. A health care exchange […]
Doctors Taking ER Call: A Dying Breed
In the future, if you go to an emergency room and you have a problem that requires a specialist – like a brain surgeon, orthopedic surgeon or plastic surgeon – you may have difficulty finding a specialist to see you during your ER visit, even if you have insurance. According to the Medical Group Management […]
Are plastic surgeons doing too many “Medicare” eyelid lifts?
According to an article by Joe Eaton and David Donald on the Center for Public Integrity website, “from 2001 to 2011, eyelid lifts charged to Medicare more than tripled to 136,000 annually.” Physician billing data by the Center for Public Integrity showed that “in 2001, physicians billed taxpayers a total of $20 million for the […]
Why do patients continue to go to the ER for their primary care?
Just recently, Earl K. Long Hospital in Baton Rouge, LA, the “charity hospital” of Baton Rouge for the under and uninsured, closed. In a very coordinated and labor intensive transition orchestrated by Our Lady of the Lake Hospital, the patients have been given more treatment options. The transition was supposed to occur in October but […]
The Cost of Cosmetic Surgery…but more informative!
So I’m looking at a weekly email that I receive which highlights new articles in the media pertaining to plastic surgery. As a plastic surgeon, it’s natural for me to want to stay up to date on the latest developments. But as the founder of BuildMyBod, a website that provides total price estimates on cosmetic […]