At 2 a.m. in a Beijing hotel room, a senior corporate executive experienced severe chest pain and called the WorldClinic physician hotline. Within five minutes, he was instructed to take nitroglycerin, aspirin and a beta-blocker, which he received from the firm before the trip as part of his personal prescription medical kit. As his chest pain eased, his care team arranged to have him transported to a hospital with a 24-hour cardiac catheter lab and a western-trained cardiologist. While en route, his baseline EKG and records were faxed to the hospital and the WorldClinic physician spoke directly with the hospital’s cardiology team. At 3:15 a.m., he underwent a successful angioplasty and was flown to his home hospital in Boston 10 days later, with his family informed every step of the way.
A client returned from a multi-city European trip and experienced mild shortness of breath. He attributed it to fatigue, but a senior manager at his family office urged him to contact WorldClinic. After five minutes on the phone with the client, the firm’s doctors determined he might have been suffering from a blood clot induced by prolonged inactivity during his flight home. The low oxygen reading on the pulse oximeter in his medical kit reinforced the diagnosis—indicating the clot may have migrated to his lungs. He was directed to a local emergency room, where a CT scan confirmed the diagnosis. Four days later, after successful treatments, he was recovering back home with his family.
Rich clients, such as those cited in these two medical emergencies, are gravitating to concierge health-care providers, who specialize in providing quality medical care in what are often confusing and challenging environments.
While wealthy families often have close ties to physicians and healthcare facilities—partly due to their charitable support of hospitals and other health-care institutions—concierge services such as WorldClinic provide a service not normally offered by a family doctor or local hospital. This would be the role of a health-care provider that could provide immediate medical assistance for wealthy family members who fall ill while outside their home hospital’s care network.
There are a number of deliverables that separate concierge health care from the more “traditional” delivery of medicine. Some of these deliverables are particular to concierge medicine and others are enhancements of traditional medical services:
24/7 On-Call Physicians: Getting access to a physician whenever medical services are required is very appealing. Quick access to a physician for timely diagnosis and immediate treatment saves lives and prevents acute problems from becoming critical.
Second Opinions: Medicine is both a science and an art. Very often it is about having access to a vetted and recognized leader in his or her specialty, with the ability to provide high-quality second opinions or a different perspective for serious or complex diseases such as cancer or Parkinsonism.
Complete Case Continuity: Having a qualified physician overseeing treatment across specialists can be both comforting and informative. It ties into the value of a centralized, consolidated medical record.
Secure, 24/7 Access To Medical Records: The ability to obtain medical information about a person can be crucial during medical emergencies. Technology, meanwhile, is making records more accessible.
Longevity Planning: It is possible to lengthen a person’s life by using a longevity checklist. For a great many individuals, developing a health-focused road map with the aim of living longer is very attractive.
Connected Monitoring. Long-distance health monitoring is becoming more common with the proliferation of smartphones and similar technologies. Very often, the more data a physician has, the better the outcome.
Tele-diagnosis And Treatment. Physicians who are on call around the clock need the ability to use mobile technology to evaluate and treat people. While this service is becoming more accepted, it’s still not that common, and it’s limited to a relatively small number of health-care providers.
Destination Medical Planning. Having access to medical resources in different locations is extremely valuable for individuals and families who do a lot of traveling.
Foreign M.D./Hospital Database. The quality of doctors can vary wildly abroad. Correlated to destination medical planning, this service is about having a vetted list of qualified local physicians who have both the professional qualifications and a track record that demonstrates sustained clinical competence.
Global Medical Evacuation. An important component of medical concierge services is an insured evacuation plan that can get patients back home if they are hospitalized overseas. It is important to make sure the plan takes patients all the way back to their home or designated hospital and not “to the nearest, most appropriate medical center.”
Personal Prescription Medical Kits. As the two emergency scenarios demonstrated, being able to reach into a prepared medical kit for treatment during a medical emergency—under the direction of a doctor—can be a concierge service that saves lives.
Variations On A Theme
Clients desire loyalty, efficiency and competence from their health-care professionals, which is why concierge services are designed to fulfill these needs.
There are several versions of concierge health care; most of them are small practices with conventional office hours and a specialist referral network limited to staff from the local hospital.
Moreover, while there are many clear distinctions among the types of offerings as the field of medicine evolves, it’s more and more likely the differences will become fewer. For example, as mobile technology improves and the costs come down, telemedical options will multiply and may very well become standard components of all medical practices.
In helping clients choose a concierge service, it’s important for advisors to recognize that there are considerable variations in services within each of the four categories (Figure 1). Some are much more sophisticated than others, having integrated components of telemedicine, personal prescription medical kits and connected monitoring.
