WASHINGTON: Howard Stark’s office is quiet. No patients sit in his waiting room. No receptionist answers the phone — Stark does not have a receptionist.
Instead, he and his assistant Michele Norris-Bell check e-mail alerts on handheld devices and — between seeing patients in person.
Stark has moved most of his practice, based in Washington, onto the web and he couldn’t be happier. Since he started his web service two years ago, he has received 14,000 e-mails.
Yet, he feels like an old-fashioned family doctor in a small town than a modern physician. “That’s 14,000 phone calls that we did not have to answer and that patients did not have to make,” Stark said.
He does not charge for answering e-mail. “You have to come in once a year for an exam,” Stark said. The rest is free — prescription refills, questions about medication, even questions about unusual stings.
He also gets updates on patients’ personal lives. “People say how impersonal e-mail is. No way. It is so personal because I can hear what is going on with the kids,” Stark said in an interview at his otherwise ordinary office. “It keeps me a lot closer to what is going on with my patients.”.
Health experts, the US government, labor unions, employers and average citizens all agree the US health care system badly needs improvement. Costs are soaring and yet the average physician, according to many estimates, spends only about 10 minutes with each patient.
Harried desk staff often double- and even triple-book each appointment slot to make optimal use of the doctor’s time and to make sure the overheads are covered. “They are seeing patients every 10 minutes and from 7 a.m. to 7 at night. They don’t even have time to learn how to save time,” Stark said. “The medical profession is being pushed to the edge.”
Not in Stark’s office, where each patient is allocated at least half an hour per visit. Stark rents two offices, a waiting room and two examination rooms from his two former partners. He employs only Norris-Bell.
He figures he saves at least $50,000 a year.
Stark has some other advantages that other doctors lack — he does not accept any insurance, public or private, although he will help fill out the paperwork that allows patients to claim reimbursement from their insurers.
That freed him up to go solo in his practice, and a few well-placed real estate investments allowed him to go part-time.
The idea came to him while booking a flight. “I was making a seat assignment to go to Miami. And I said, ‘why is it I can make a seat assignment four months in advance and my patients can’t book a half-hour appointment?”’ he said. “I started thinking of other things that could be done online.”
