The $5,000 Checkup

摘要

After a six-hour flight from New York I check into the Four Seasons Hotel in Westlake Village near Los Angeles, exhausted. My room is fabulous: 10-foot ceilings, a plush king-size bed with feather pillows and a big high-definition television. I don't get to enjoy it for long, though. There's a knock at my door.rnIt's my sleep technicians, and they've brought along an enormous suitcase of electrical equipment. After some polite chitchat they start hooking me up. Eleven electrodes go on my head, two on my chest and four more I have to slide downrnMinn, does 7,000 executive exams a year, up from 4,000 in 2002, and has a six-month waiting list. Trio Health manages an executive physical program at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital that opened in 2005 and sees more than 1,000 patients annually. Last fall Canyon Ranch in Tucson hooked up with the Cleveland Clinic to offer a $3,700 four-day executive physical. In a variant dubbed concierge medicine, doctors charge patients a $1,500 annual fee for an extensive physical plus same-day appointments. MDVIP in Boca Raton, Fla. has 200 such doctors under contract and is adding a dozen more a month.