Medical services catering to international clients, wealthy

By Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) The sort of patients Dr. Andrew Sternlicht's new business will serve probably don't worry about medical insurance.

Indeed, Hotel Recovery, which will provide post-surgical services for patients at luxury hotels like the Ritz Carlton and the Boston Park Plaza starting in March, won't accept insurance payments.

Sternlicht, a former anesthesiologist at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center, founded the company to cater to people who don't mind paying between $800 and $1,200 a day to recuperate in style.

The firm, which Sternlicht said will not provide medical services, is one of a number of such companies founded by Boston-area doctors.

''Hospitals are focused on getting people out earlier and earlier,'' Sternlicht told the Boston Sunday Globe. ''We're offering the luxury of years gone by, when you could arrive the night before surgery and arrange your things and get a little pampering afterward.''

Boston, with its reputation as home to some of the world's finest doctors and hospitals, already attracts patients who can pick and choose where they will seek care.

But Karyn Donga, a nurse who founded Global Health Services, says companies like hers are responding to increased competition for those patients.

''International patients are getting more astute and shopping around in different cities. They're used to very good service,'' Donga said. ''It's the same thing with domestic patients a lot of them are willing to go outside their health plan when they have the resources to get the best.''

Private duty nurses employed by Global Health will change bandages, arrange for child care and even travel with patients to tropical retreats for as much as $100 an hour.

Another firm founded by a local doctor, WorldPath, maintains clients' medical records and hires doctors for them. Its 3,600 clients, some of them royalty, agree to pay the doctor's full fee. In return, physicians agree not to keep patients waiting more than 15 minutes, and return phone calls within a few hours.

''If you're getting 100 percent of your fee schedule you might want to call the patient back right away,'' explained WorldPath chief operating officer Donald Cornuet. ''Because the next time we have a referral for your specialty you might not get it. It's pretty simple. The more responsive the doctors are, the more patients they see.''

The wealthy have always purchased better service, health policy specialists acknowledge. ''The question is, are they taking the services that would have gone to someone else? Is the doctor making his HMO patients sit around and wait?'' asked Herman Leonard, a Harvard professor and board member of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.

Cornuet doesn't think so. ''People say this is two-tiered medicine, when in reality these people are helping subsidize the low payments from Medicare and Medicaid,'' he said.

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