When the company MDVIP approached William Weiss, MD, seven years ago about joining its nationwide network of doctors, it didn’t require a lot of arm-twisting to convince him to make the move.
Weiss, an internist, had become increasingly concerned about the high number of patients he was seeing.
“It was getting harder and harder to do what I was trained to do, to spend time with patients and provide appropriate preventive and general healthcare,” he said.
Weiss had been in private practice since 1993 with a group of other Memphis physicians. When MDVIP came calling, he said, “I looked at their model of healthcare and was immediately attracted to it. It’s a great way to practice medicine.”
MDVIP’s network consists of more than 870 physicians in 43 states and the District of Columbia. The company was founded in 2000 in Boca Raton, Florida. The doctors aren’t employed by MDVIP – they own and manage their own practices and make their own medical decisions – but the company provides various services, including research, technical and operational support and marketing.
The physicians are limited to no more than 600 patients, who pay the doctors a fee of $1,500 to $1,650 for annual memberships. The physicians, in turn, pay MDVIP a flat fee for their services.
Patients benefit by having cell-phone access to their doctor 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“Calls go directly to me,” Weiss said. “I don’t use an answering service. When they call, I know who they are, and I know there’s an issue. Part of being their partner in healthcare is that that’s what I’ve chosen to do and that’s why I’m available.”
Although some MDVIP doctors have subspecialties, they are primarily internists and all practice primary care. The focus is on the patient’s personal wellness and disease prevention. With fewer patients, MDVIP physicians are able to spend more time with each of them.
“You don’t have to be a genius to be a physician,” Weiss said. “Sometimes it just takes your being there. The nice thing about this model is that it allows for you to be with a family going through a tough time.”
Two months ago, Weiss had a visit with a relatively new patient, Tom Stephenson, 66, who by all appearances seemed to be in good shape. He exercised and ate well. According to his daughter, Katie Stephenson McDermott, “he was like the picture of health.”
But Weiss said, “There were a couple of clues that suggested he may have some underlying coronary disease.” The doctor sent Stephenson for tests, and within a short time Stephenson, who Weiss said “was a walking time bomb,” had quadruple bypass surgery.
The diagnosis by Weiss could not have come at a better time. The Stephenson family was about to leave for Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for a vacation of hiking, fly fishing, rafting and horseback riding.
“We would have had my dad, who had four major blockages, hiking 7,000 feet above sea level,” Katie McDermott said. “Needless to say, fate intervened; Dr. Weiss intervened, so we feel pretty blessed.
“My dad had an incredible heart surgeon and he owes a lot to that team, but he really says Bill Weiss saved his life, and he didn’t even know it needed saving. Dr. Weiss is pretty phenomenal in our book.”
She is convinced that it was the extra time that Weiss was able to spend with her father that resulted in him discovering “an undetected problem that we would never have foreseen if he had not been as thorough as he was.”
On the other hand, is there a downside to having patients who can call any day, around the clock? No, responds Weiss.
“I wish all docs had the opportunity to do what I do, to be honest,” he said.
All of his patients are MDVIP patients, and about 75 percent are on Medicare.
If any of them have a medical problem out of town, Weiss can arrange for an MDVIP doctor within the network to oversee their care. Weiss provides the same reciprocity service for other MDVIP patients who are visiting Memphis.
MDVIP also has an arrangement with Medical Centers of Excellence – including Mayo Clinic, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, MD Anderson and Cleveland Clinic – if specialist care is needed beyond what is available in the patient’s community.
MDVIP cites seven peer-reviewed, journal-published studies “showing improved patient outcomes and cost savings to the healthcare system.” More information on those studies is available on mdvip.com by clicking on “press room” and then “press releases.”
Weiss grew up in Memphis and has spent his entire career in Tennessee – from undergraduate at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville to medical school at East Tennessee State and internship and residency at UT-Memphis, after which he joined the practice headed by Dr. Maury Bronstein.
“My wife, Patti, is also a native Memphian,” Weiss said, “and we both love Memphis and really had no intentions of looking to move away.”
Patti runs, plays tennis and is into Bikram yoga. Weiss runs and plays racquetball and also finds time for pro bono work with the Church Health Center.
His newest interest is culinary medicine, and he recently began taking classes.
“They’re going to have culinary medicine at the Church Health Center,” he said, “not just for CHC patients but for everybody to educate people not only about healthy eating and healthy management of their disease processes at the dinner table, but also about teaching physicians, residents and medical students.
“Start with educating the physicians and the students and it will snowball into educating their patients.”
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