Dr. Jordan Shlain, founder of Private Medical.
Credit: Jordan Shlain
A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide for wealthy investors and consumers. Register to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
When people ask Dr. Jordan Shlain to describe his medical practice, he simply says, “It’s a family office for your health.” »
“Family offices generally have the goal of preserving wealth,” he said. “Our goal is to preserve your health. After 24 years, you are an asset that depreciates in terms of health. We therefore aim to reduce the slope of the curve for as long as possible.”
As depressing as it may be for patients, Shlain’s strategy is paying off as a business model. His company, Private Medical, is pioneering a new type of healthcare for the ultra-wealthy that has taken concierge medicine to a whole new level. Rather than simply offering on-call doctors and faster visits, Private Medical has pioneered a highly personalized, all-in-one service that is more akin to the most sophisticated investment family offices.
Like family offices, Private Medical has an in-house team to manage a family’s entire health portfolio – from fitness and diet tracking to longevity research and more. by surgeries and medical emergencies. It now serves more than 1,000 wealthy families, with offices in California – San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills – New York and Miami, with more offices on the way.
Private Medical’s team of 135 doctors, nurses, clinical staff, pharmacists and medical support professionals provide 24/7 on-call service, including home and office visits in case of need. Private Medical does not advertise and does most of its business through referrals. He prefers to call patients “members.”
Shlain declined to provide details on pricing, but Private Medical’s clients say he charges $40,000 a year for each adult patient and $25,000 per patient under 18. The annual fee covers the cost of office visits, tests and procedures, but not hospitalization.
The rise of family office-style medical practices — some of which charge as much as $60,000 a year for membership — reflects the increasing wealth of families worth $100 million or more and the growing demand for health care. hyper-personalized and data-driven health. aging class of billionaires and millionaires.
The market for concierge and personalized medical services for the wealthy is expected to grow more than 50% by 2032, to nearly $11 billion annually, according to Precedence Research.
Shlain says insurance companies, overworked doctors and inflated prices have transformed the health care system into what he calls a “sick care system.” Private Medical, for those who can afford it, aims to be proactive, performing frequent tests and diagnostics on patients, constantly updating them with new research and scientific knowledge and obtaining detailed information on the mode lifestyle, habits, family and professional life of a patient, Shlain. said.
Shlain, whose father was a laparoscopic surgeon and whose mother had a Ph.D. in psychology, began by making house calls for the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in San Francisco. He took a “crash course” in high-end hospitality from top hotel concierges and realized that health care should be more like five-star hotel service than an impersonal system of lengthy wait times and error-filled diagnostics.
“I will know everything about you to help you make the best decisions of your life,” he said. “I am 70% doctor, 15% psychologist, 10% rabbi and 1% friend.”
Private Medical’s job is often to protect its patients from the broader medical system, Shlain said. One of his patients, a 38-year-old entrepreneur and major donor to a major hospital, was admitted with intestinal obstruction. The CEO of the hospital and the head of the surgical department rushed to start operating. Shlain pushed back and recommended waiting a day or two. The patient recovered on his own in the hospital “and was released without surgery,” Shlain said.
Shlain also creates personalized medical kits that patients can take with them when they travel or work. When a patient scratched his cornea while playing beach volleyball in the Bahamas, he was able to treat his eye with a prescription from his medical kit rather than seeking a hospital on one of the nearby islands.
Like most services aimed at the ultra-rich, Private Medical’s main advantage is access. Shlain has spent more than 20 years developing relationships with more than 4,000 specialists in various medical and scientific fields to connect patients with the right person for their specific needs.
With roots in Silicon Valley and numerous technology clients, Private Medical is also connected to biotechnology startups conducting cutting-edge research and exploring new treatments. Shlain said Private Medical conducts due diligence on four or five new companies per month to keep pace with rapidly changing science and research.
When a patient was diagnosed with severe depression, Shlain worked with a new “precision psychiatry” group at Stanford that performs MRI scans of the brain and uses connectomes (a map of neuronal connections in the brain) to determine which medicine was the best for treatment. .
“He got the right medication, and now he’s doing better,” Shlain said.
Private Medical also prides itself on its technology, developed with some of Silicon Valley’s top CEOs and entrepreneurs. Its platform helps doctors and patients easily access data, manage appointments and workflows.
Two important areas for his wealthy patients are longevity and sleep. When it comes to longevity, Shlain said there is no silver bullet, no diet or medication to turn back time, even for billionaires. The real goal, he said, is to “enable you to live with your physical and mental faculties intact for as long as possible with as few high-quality interactions with the health care system as possible.”
“Your good result is our income,” he said.
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