The best healthcare begins with a relationship, and relationships don’t develop in 10 minutes – but that is all the time most physicians can allot in their busy schedules. It’s not your doctor’s fault you can’t get an appointment when you’re sick or that they only have a few minutes to make a diagnosis before sending you on your way. Blame it on a shortage of primary care physicians and endless insurance and government paperwork requirements. Dr. Thomas P. Lenns has found a better way to serve his patients. As a concierge physician, instead of trying to take care of hundreds upon hundreds of patients as he did in his previous practice, he now limits the total number of patients he sees to no more than one-third of his previous patient base.
What does that mean to patients? It means greater appointment availability, shorter wait times in reception, enough time in appointments to address all their healthcare concerns, and the physician they trust is always available, even after the office has closed.
Before switching to concierge care, Lenns said his schedule would be full for the entire week. Sick patients would often wind up going to urgent care simply because appointments were not available. Now, his practice holds open four time slots each day to accommodate patients who need immediate care.
“You cannot manage a serious healthcare condition in 10 minutes,” Lenns said. “The main benefit of concierge medicine is the time to be thorough.” In the concierge model, Lenns schedules 30 minutes for regular appointments and an hour for physical exams.
And if a patient is sick after hours or over the weekend? No problem. Patients of Dr. Lenns have his private cell phone number as well as his personal email address to conveniently correspond for non-urgent matters.
From left to right: Deanna Marshall, Dr. Thomas Lenns, Monika Belka and Cheryl Thomas
“Patients may call me whenever they need me,” Lenns said, stressing that patients who are sick should not wait because a minor issue on Friday can become a full-blown problem by Monday morning.
Lenns went on to say that it is not unusual for a patient to come in with one complaint and then mention another, “In the old model, you either dealt with the secondary issue and ran behind, or were forced to reschedule the patient for a second visit. Neither is ideal. But in the concierge model we can manage the day better and thus, also service our patients better.”
Getting to know his patients on a more personal level is often the key to more accurate medical evaluations and more thoughtful solutions. “In medical school, our professors emphasized that for every 30-40 percent of patients, the root cause of their issue was psychological,” Lenns said.
“When you have a chance to sit down with your patients and hear about what’s going on in their lives, you can find out the source of the ailment”.
One harsh reality many Americans face is the absence of preventive care, which is due largely in part, Lenns said, to time constraints and lacking financial incentives. The healthcare industry simply isn’t built to support preventive medicine, he said. Lenns, however, is adamant about preventive care and will take the necessary time to educate his patients about best health practices and lifestyle changes to avoid the three main killers: heart disease, stroke, and cancer. Shifting the focus from strictly diagnostic care and making preventive care a priority can be life-saving, Lenns said.
There is an out-of-pocket annual fee to be a patient in Dr. Lenns’ practice, which includes the annual comprehensive physical exam.
With Dr. Lenns, patients are not treated like a number on a medical record, but with personalized attention and care. Simply put, there is no substitute for a doctor who knows you.
Dr. Lenns’ office is located at 89 Main Street on Hilton Head Island. For more information, visit drlenns.com or call (843) 681-5305.
