Healthy Returns

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.