The Two-Day, $5,000 C-Suite Physical

Executive health programs are convenient for the C-suite—and great for hospitals’ balance sheets.

- Sam Grobart

I am in good health. I am out of shape.

These two facts—one I hoped to be true, and one I absolutely knew to be true—were delivered to me at the end of a thorough two-day medical exam in early November at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. I underwent this battery of tests not because I was at risk for any major illness, nor because I’m a hypochondriac (I mean, no more of one than any unfit 42-year-old man has a right to be), but because the renowned medical center offers something called the Executive Health Program, which sounded exceedingly fancy.

Executive Health is to a doctor’s visit what the Concorde was to domestic coach. It’s designed “for the busy executive on the go,” not unlike the services advertised on 50-year-old signs at my dry cleaner. And though high-end health-care offerings such as this one are taxed heavily under the Affordable Care Act, and companies are always looking to cut expenses, neither issue has diminished the demand for these services at Mayo. Even with a price tag that hovers at about $5,000 in out-of-pocket costs—not including food, lodging, and airfare, which can easily double that figure—Executive Health admissions at Mayo rose from 10,887 patients in 2011 to 17,667 in 2015, or 62 percent.