The Price Tag Problem
$99 per month. That's the number people see when they look at a concierge medicine membership.
For many people, the mental math stops there. $99/month is $1,188 per year — and if they currently have health insurance with a primary care benefit, the instinct is to compare those two numbers and conclude that the concierge membership is the extra, optional cost.
That framing is backwards. It ignores what your current model of care is actually costing you.
The Hidden Costs of Traditional Healthcare
Let's quantify what most people experience in the standard system:
Your Time
- Average wait time for a primary care appointment: 26 days (Merritt Hawkins, 2022)
- Average time in waiting room: 19 minutes
- Average time with physician: 7–11 minutes
- Average number of visits per issue (initial + follow-up): 2–3
A routine issue — sinus infection, prescription refill, lab review — can consume half a workday by the time you account for transit, waiting, and appointment time. If your time is worth $50/hour, that's $150–$200 per medical episode.
Productivity Loss
The average employed adult loses 2.7 workdays annually to preventable illness — not counting time spent waiting for appointments. Many of these are conditions that would have been caught earlier, or managed faster, with direct-access care.
Emergency Room Overuse
The urgent care and ER visits that happen at 7pm on a Friday — because your provider's office is closed until Monday — average $1,000–$3,000 per visit for conditions that could have been handled in a 10-minute phone call with a physician who knows your history.
The Compounding Health Cost
Delayed care compounds. The cholesterol panel that was scheduled for 'next year.' The thyroid symptom that was 'watched' for six months. The persistent fatigue that was attributed to stress rather than investigated. Early intervention in virtually every chronic disease produces dramatically better outcomes — and dramatically lower lifetime healthcare costs — than late-stage treatment.
What $99/Month Actually Buys
At PracticeRx, your Concierge Access membership includes:
- A dedicated physician and concierge nurse, available 7 days a week
- Same-day care for acute issues — by phone, video, or in-person
- Priority appointment slots reserved for members
- Prescription management for any health need
- Deepest discounts across all PracticeRx services
- Annual wellness strategy session
- A provider who knows your chart — every time
Convert that to hourly value. If the membership eliminates 3 wasted waiting-room afternoons per year, it has paid for itself in saved time alone — before you factor in one avoided urgent care visit, one earlier diagnosis, or one medication caught before it became a problem.
The Right Question
The question isn't whether you can afford concierge medicine.
The question is whether you can afford the alternative — a system that books you three weeks out, rushes you through in seven minutes, and calls it care.
For most people who calculate it honestly, the math isn't close.
PracticeRx Concierge Access starts at $99/mo per person, $379 max per household. No long-term contracts.