What's in a Name? Concierge vs. Memberhship Medicine

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Over time, “Concierge Medicine” has quietly become a catch-all term. It is used to describe everything from boutique, ultra-small panel practices to insurance-participating membership models embedded within large health systems. When fundamentally different approaches share the same label, meaningful discussion breaks down. Physicians talk about time and continuity. Health systems hear access concerns and optics. The public hears exclusivity.

That mismatch matters.

“Membership Medicine” is a more accurate and inclusive term for this evolving field. This is not a call to eliminate the word “Concierge,” but to place it in proper context as one expression within a broader category. Membership-based care spans a spectrum of models, structures, and settings. Lumping them together under a single term obscures important distinctions and slows progress.

How we talk about these models shapes how they are perceived alongside traditional fee-for-service care. Optics matter. If membership medicine is going to mature and scale, lingering stigmas need to be addressed and inclusiveness needs to be intentional. These models should be understood as complementary or alternatives to fee-for-service medicine, not oppositional or elitist.

Over the coming weeks, I plan to speak more about membership medicine as a field, not from a single practice vantage point, but from a systems-level view like we have never considered before. It is time that we address multiple issues, our field is growing at an astounding speed and the framework and thought infrastructure will be important