What a family office should ask a concierge doctor
A family office should ask five things before a retainer is signed. Who the physician is. What is promised when something is urgent. Who holds the record. What the fee covers and what is billed on top. And how the physician travels. Our retainer is £40,000 for one person and £100,000 for a principal and three.
Who is the physician, and how many families do they hold
A family office should know the physician by name before the retainer is paid. Ask for the name, the qualification, the year and the institution, and then check the GMC register yourself.
Ask as well how many families that physician holds. Ours hold fifty families and no more, so the physician who answers knows the principal by name and has read the record before the call. You meet two physicians and choose one, and the office may ask for a woman or a man and for a language.
Our clinicians are named on this site with their training beside them. Dr Adel Elalfy, who leads primary care, has been a GP in Britain for more than twenty five years and a Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners since 2001.
What is promised when something is urgent
Ask for the promise as a number, and ask what happens when it is missed.
The retainer gives you your physician’s own number, answered at any hour, with a named colleague covering when they are away. When a specialist is needed, a liaison offers a first appointment within 48 hours when it is urgent and five working days when it is routine, arranges the tests and imaging, and your physician attends the appointment and any hospital admission, here or abroad, and brings the letter back into the record.
A household of four has about twenty consultations a year between them at the average rate of 5.16 each that the University of Oxford found, before the reviews and the specialists. The retainer is built so that every one of them is with the physician who knows them.
In London the physician comes to the house, the office or the aircraft whenever the household needs one. Our London clinics, including Marylebone and Belgravia, are open from 7am to 9pm every day for anything better done in a room.
Who holds the record, and who may read it
A family office often sits between the principal and the physician, which is exactly where a confidentiality question starts.
Our answer is one record, owned by the family, portable and deletable. It is held under the family’s own reference rather than a name where the office asks for that, and the physician signs the office’s own confidentiality terms before the first meeting.
The clinical detail goes to the person it is about. Anything that reaches the office that pays needs the written consent of that person, each time.
What the fee covers and what is billed on top
A retainer usually covers the physician’s time, and the consultant, the scan, the laboratory and the hospital are where an annual figure grows. Ask for both halves in writing.
Ours is £40,000 a year for one person and £100,000 for a principal and three, with £20,000 for each further member of the household. Every person covered has everything in our Platinum membership, the executive physical every year, the screening their age and history call for, a longevity plan reviewed every quarter and the bloods it needs.
On top of Platinum, the retainer holds a physician who holds fifty families and no more, their own number at any hour, house calls whenever the household needs one, and the physician at every specialist appointment and admission.
Hospital care, surgery, a specialist’s own fee and tests beyond Platinum are billed at what they cost us plus 20%, with the invoice attached, so the office sees exactly what was paid to whom.
Published family retainers with a physician run from $40,000 to $100,000 and more a year. Ours sits at the top of that range because each physician holds fifty families and gives each of them the time that number allows.
How the physician travels with the family
For a planned trip the physician can travel with the principal, at a day rate agreed before the diary is set. For an unplanned one we work by telephone and video from any country, find a trusted doctor where the principal is, book them in and send the record ahead.
Where the principal is admitted to a hospital abroad, the physician speaks to the treating team directly, so decisions are made with the history in front of them. When the principal is home, the physician reads the notes from abroad with them and carries the plan forward in the same record.
Where the numbers come from
$40,000
to $100,000 and more a year per family is the published range for family retainers with a physician, where each physician holds fifty families.
ConciergeMedFinder, concierge medicine membership tiers compared, 2026 Open the paper
100 million
consultations in English general practice were analysed, and the rate rose from 4.67 to 5.16 consultations per person per year between 2007 and 2014.
Hobbs FDR and colleagues, Clinical workload in UK primary care, The Lancet, 2016. University of Oxford
Good to know
£40,000 a year for one person, £100,000 for a principal and three, and £20,000 for each further member of the household.
Yes. One physician holds the household. A paediatric or specialist question goes to the right clinician, and your physician stays in the conversation.
The retainer includes everything in Platinum for every person. On top, the physician holds fifty families, answers their own number at any hour, comes to the house whenever you need and attends every specialist and admission.
You are told the same week and nothing is charged. Fifty families is the limit we keep.
Ready to book
Choose a time at the clinic in Marylebone. If you are not sure what you need, request an appointment and we will point you to the right person.