At 9:00 p.m. on the evening of July 4, Jim Ruddy received an emergency phone call from a Nevada hospital room. Ruddy, president of the private family office Keswick Management Inc., is used to fielding calls from family members about financial matters. But this was different: A child in the family had badly damaged his leg and emergency room doctors needed his mother to consent to treatment. The Seattle-based family was on vacation in Nevada, knew little about the local healthcare options and so contacted Ruddy.

“As president, I’m the chief contact officer for any issue possible,” says Ruddy, who is based in New York. “But this was a tough situation. I had connections to hospitals, but couldn’t find out more about that Nevada hospital or doctor in the field. I found myself in a position where I was uncomfortable and without expertise.”

Luckily, Keswick Management had recently signed on with PinnacleCare in Baltimore, a leader in an emerging field known as VIP care. PinnacleCare, a healthcare “advocate” that maintains a database of quality performance metrics of doctors and providers, was able to offer guidance. “They made the determination of where was the right place to do the operation, and who would be the best person to do it,” says Ruddy.

Joining the ranks of financial advice, estate and tax planning, real estate guidance, and other offerings, services such as PinnacleCare’s, if not yet standard, could become a common feature of family offices. Says Kathryn McCarthy, a leading family office consultant, “If the mandate is to oversee the total financial and personal lives of the family, including human capital, then these services are an enormous benefit to both office and family.”

Adler further explains PinnacleCare’s groundbreaking model of personal healthcare advocacy:

THE ADVOCACY MODEL
It’s not simply that the wealthy want to buy better access. Sometimes, they also have problems unique to being wealthy. Imagine, for example, that you’re a major donor to a hospital, your family name is on a hospital building, but you develop a disease that another hospital excels in treating. Certainly, you’d want your visits to that other hospital to be discreet. This is just the sort of problem PinnacleCare says it can solve-and has-helping the high-profile patient quietly find his way to another hospital.

John Hutchins, founder of PinnacleCare, has a background in VIP medicine at the Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, where he coordinated treatment for international high-net-worth patients. Recognizing that a single hospital is rarely the best at treating every disease, Hutchins put together a VIP service, offering guidance on “best–in–class” physicians and providers throughout the country.

Some of PinnacleCare’s services, such as “medical itineraries” are unique, even in the VIP medical field. PinnacleCare provides a list of recommended medical providers and doctors in each city that a member plans to visit, providing a “just–in–case” parallel to a standard travel itinerary of destination landmarks. Advocacy services—the corporate version of having a loved one by your side—include having doctors accompany members on hospital visit, schedule appointments, and deal with paper work. Members are given all of their records on a PinnacleCare Key™, a USB device that fits on a key chain. And because most members are, in fact, healthy, the company provides wellness services, including screening tests and health coaches who “coach” members in living a healthy life, and according to a spokeswoman at PinnacleCare, “talk them through any obstacles that prevent them from dieting or exercising.”

PinnacleCare’s services range from modest (a basic service of a nurse hotline emergency guidance and advocacy is $2,500 annually) to deluxe: PinnacleCare’s “private circle” goes for a set-up fee of $15,000 and annual fee of $50,000, which doesn’t include the actual cost of healthcare.

Hutchins sees PinnacleCare as particularly valuable to family offices. “The CEO or trust officer gets these calls and they are put in a terrible position of trying to provide medical advice. We explain that outsourcing to someone with expertise is a good idea.”