About 6 months ago, a business advisor (and patient) advised me to keep an honest diary of how long I work for each patient at each consultation, after about 3 months we met up again and she examined my results, to her shock the average time for an initial (the first) consultation was 259 minutes or 4 hours and 19 minutes, whilst my follow-up consultation average time was 117 minutes or 1 hour and 57 minutes.
For you see, my 90 or so minutes with you on your first consultation isn't the end of my service to you. Before that first meeting I send you a 4 page pre-consultation form to fill in, which I review and look details up before our initial meeting to focus our face to face time to your benefit, and this takes about 30 minutes.
After the consultation, I review my notes, spend time looking up symptoms, test results, medications, issues, etc and then when I feel I have YOU fairly solid in my mind, I devise your personal medicine(s), reflecting on multiple aspects, swapping herbs in and out, delving into multiple tomes, checking my near completed mix against your drugs, health issues, age, allergies, etc, whilst bringing to bear as many treatment strands as I can, from biomedical treatment and symptom relief, through to physiomedical tissue states, blood stasis and autonomic nervous system dysfunction. This can take anywhere from around an hour to 7 hours for a patient with very complex needs and on 30+ orthodox medications.
The business advisor compared my time with accountants (min £190ish for basic service for 259 minutes), business advisors (min £225 for junior advisor for 259 minutes), private physiotherapists (min £320 for minor treatment for 259 minutes) and private GPs (min £1250 for limited consultation for 259 minutes). Then we looked at local car mechanics (min £350 for labour for 259 minutes) and ladies hairdressers (min £230 for junior stylist dry cuts for 259 minutes).
Comparing these figures with my own she stated after looking at my practice, her personal health improvements, my many testimonials, my 7 years of health care university study and 22 years being a health care professional, that I was vastly undervaluing myself, my practice, my service and my benefit to my patients. Also if I was undervaluing myself and my service, so were my patients, which had to stop.
She devised a new payment structure more realistic and appropriate, I felt embarrassed at the figures so we compromised in the middle. All my old patients will continue on the fee model you enjoy with obviously no difference in service, and if anyone has been given me as a
recommendation or finds me and will struggle with my new fees then please contact me for a talk.
I hope you understand why I undertook this review and change, as on a full day I can see about 2 new patients and maybe 1 sneaky follow-up and was beginning to have to look for paid employment, which shocked my patient (the business advisor). As she stated with such an intense patient focus, reducing how many patients I can actually see, my patients really get a bespoke, professional and individually private health service.
Keep well and see you soon
Karl x
Comments