The migration of physicians into large, regulated entities is essential if the practice of medicine is going to be transformed into the corporatist-government model that is the only way health-care costs can be controlled.
Although the model differs from region to region and doctor to doctor, concierge medicine basically means that patients pay doctors to be their agents, rather than the agents of third-party-payers such as insurance companies or government bureaucracies.
Now that patient satisfaction scores are influencing reimbursement, hospital administrators are "extremely interested" in communication training, says Richard Frankel, a developer of the model who is now a professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine and its affiliated Regenstrief Institute.