Seattle doctors try flat-rate no-limit primary care

[Adsos Letter]

By David Lawsky
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)

A Seattle clinic for people fed up with insurance, started by doctors fed up with insurance, has gotten $4 million in private venture capital money to expand, it announced on Monday.

Qliance says it has a profit-making solution to the problems of long waits, rushed doctors and cursory care that bother patients, at the same time that it eliminates the paperwork and pressure that plague primary care doctors.

"If you spent five minutes in my office you would notice there is nobody waiting. We don't have to stack them up like jets over Newark," said Garrison Bliss, a doctor and co-founder of the primary care clinic.

The new venture funding comes from Second Avenue Partners with participation by New Atlantic Ventures and Clear Fir Partners, bringing total capital raised to about $7.5 million.

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5660N620090707

[Lagomorph]

1. Now that the word is out....

I wonder how long the "no waiting" thing will last.

[Selatius]

2. You could probably set up a non-profit version for even cheaper.

If you can bundle together, say, 500 people paying a flat-rate like in the article, the money could be used to hire a small number of doctors dedicated just to those 500 people, probably a little more if you cut out the profit-taking middleman. The model could be scaled up to thousands of people if need be.

[SoCalDem]

3. or they go back to a business plan that has rates people can afford

The problem is that when something "serious" is discovered, the patient then had better have insurance or a lot of money, because specialists may not be interested in the "flat rate" doctoring plan.

and if a patient needs to be hospitalized, how does that flat-rate thing work?