I really liked my doctor who is affiliated with Northwestern. I had a few instances in the past year where I couldn't get in to see her and was sent to urgent care instead. She always responded to mychart messages right away, but I realized if I ever wanted to see a doctor in person again (outside of a physical that I had to book 6 months+ in advance) I needed to go the concierge route.
I asked friends and did some research on Yelp for beloved concierge doctors and called around. I found that pricing varied (3-9k annually) and many of them had very long waitlists. It seemed that many were loving Thrive Internal Medicine, but I was bummed to hear that Dr. Petrugano and Dr. Berg weren't taking any new patients. They did tell me they had a new doctor (Dr. Kalember) that was taking new patients and I could set up a zoom to see if I'd like to move forward. I really enjoyed meeting Dr. Kalember via zoom, but couldn't find much information about her. I was a little wary about spending 4k annually on a concierge doctor when I had a dr thru Northwestern that I really liked (even if I couldn't get an appointment). And so I decided to hold off.
And then my 8 year old blessed me with a horrible case of pink eye (top 5 worst things my children have given me) and I couldn't get into my doctor once again. I decided maybe it was worth giving Dr. Kalember a try and signed up for the service.
Fortunately, since becoming a patient I've been relatively healthy (knock on wood) and haven't taken advantage of the concierge service too much. I did have a helpful in person intro meeting and a physical (which I booked just a few weeks beforehand). I was in and out within 30 minutes of both appointments and spent the entirety of those 30 minutes with the doctor. I've reached out to fill prescriptions and she's gotten back to me in record time. She has also been out of town once since I signed up and sent instructions for how to get in touch with her partners during that time. They use the spruce app to connect with them, which is very user friendly.
I'm glad I finally pulled the trigger on concierge medicine and have been encouraging my husband to do the same. I'm sure a lot of the helpfulness depends on how great the doctor is, but so far I'm having a great experience with both Thrive and Dr. Kalember. read more