Will the Doctor See You Now? The Health System’s Changing Landscape

(By Julie Appleby and Michelle Andrews for KFF Health News)

Lucia Agajanian, a 25-year-old freelance film producer in Chicago, doesn’t have a specific primary care doctor, preferring the convenience of visiting a local clinic for flu shots or going online for video visits. “You say what you need, and there’s a 15-minute wait time,” she said, explaining how her appointments usually work. “I really liked that.”

But Olga Lucia Torres, a 52-year-old who teaches narrative medicine classes at Columbia University in New York, misses her longtime primary care doctor, who kept tabs for two decades on her conditions, including lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, and made sure she was up to date on vaccines and screening tests. Two years ago, Torres received a letter informing her that he was changing to a “boutique practice” and would charge a retainer fee of $10,000 for her to stay on as a patient. Continue reading here…

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism

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