Got this today from the NAHU:

Health consulting firms help coordinate healthcare services for individuals.

The Boston Globe (6/23, Wertheimer) reported, “During the last six years, a number of personal health advising firms and solo consultants have opened shop, catering to people willing to pay fees ranging from $150 an hour to $100,000 a year for advice on the best doctors and treatments for their maladies.” The advisors “are trying to fill a gap in healthcare created by overworked primary care doctors who have less time to coordinate patient care, while also catering to the desire of a growing number of patients to take charge of their healthcare.” The consultants “help clients find specialists and also will make calls to ensure that a patient’s various doctors are communicating with each other.” Although several of these consultants cater to the wealthy, others “see themselves as performing more of a neighborly service for clients, who tend to be more middle- than high-income, and need immediate help with a health dilemma.”

“[H]elping patients navigate the medical system used to be the role of the primary care doctor,” notes Jacob Goldstein in the Wall Street Journal’s (6/23) Health Blog. “But as primary care docs have grown busier and the system has grown more complicated, patients often find themselves on their own — creating a market for” health advising firms.

Not a bad idea given the demand for accurate and comprehensive medical expertise. I wish more family doctors, internists, generalists treated their practice like a “health advising firm.”