By Rory Satran

For everything from aesthetic touch-ups to 9-1-1 emergencies, the wealthy are calling on providers who charge membership fees ranging from a few thousand dollars to six figures a year

On a sparkling August Saturday, Dr. Alexander Golberg climbed aboard a yacht anchored in Sag Harbor, N.Y., to treat two of his patients. Abe and Giovanna Haruvi, 70 and 60, work in real estate and spend most of the year in Palm Beach, but they have come to count on Golberg—or Dr. Hamptons, as he calls himself—for all their care when they’re summering out east.

Golberg pulled his supplies from his Louis Vuitton doctor’s bag—a gift from a patient—and got to work on Giovanna’s forehead Botox and Abe’s checkup. He stores medicine on ice in a caviar cooler.

“We call it Boat-tox—Botox on a boat,” said Golberg’s son Mark, who runs the business alongside him. Mark said some clients treated their desire for injectables as an “emergency,” asking Golberg to rush over before an event.

But even in 9-1-1 situations, some wealthy Hamptonites aren’t braving the waiting room. Instead, when their houseguest twists an ankle water skiing, or their kid gets bitten by a tick—again—they dial one of the region’s many concierge doctors for a poolside house call.

“This is another realm of medicine that the general population is not aware of,” said Dr. Asma Rashid of Hamptons Boutique Medicine.

Along with other areas with surging centimillionaire and billionaire populations such as South Florida, the Bay Area, New York City and Los Angeles, the East End of Long Island is teeming with concierge doctors who treat patients swiftly (usually), discreetly (hopefully) and expensively (always). These doctors charge a membership fee anywhere from a few thousand dollars to six figures a year, with one-off house calls on top of that often starting around $1,000. These doctors do not typically accept insurance.

“Money is not an obstacle,” Rashid said. “Not only can concierge medicine provide fast service, it also provides advanced medicine.” Rashid, a family physician who trained in Miami and New York and has worked in the Hamptons for 15 years, opened a branch of her company in Palm Beach, Fla., in 2021 for their snowbird clients.

The Hamptons concierge-medicine boom started in 2020, when doctors saw an opportunity to test and treat the affluent community working remotely from their beach houses. Nationwide chain Sollis Health, which focuses on emergency medicine, started a center among the tony horse farms of Water Mill in 2021. Other options include Casa Health, White Glove Medicine and individual practitioners including Dr. Magdalena Swierczewski, M.D., and Dr. James Giugliano, D.O.

Many of these doctors bill themselves as one-stop shops for all family medicine needs. Some do cosmetic services, several specialize in increasingly popular antiaging and integrative-health services, while others rush over to White Parties in the wee hours when things go awry. All of them know their way around Lyme disease and addiction issues.

Golberg had the idea to begin practicing concierge medicine in the Hamptons after watching “Royal Pains,” a television show that ran from 2009 to 2016 about a doctor who does just that. An entrepreneurial type, Golberg immigrated from Russia in 1989 and worked at his cousin-in-law’s cubic zirconia business after medical school. He has an M.D. from St. Petersburg Medical Academy and a D.O. from the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine, and is board-certified in family, osteopathic, antiaging and regenerative medicine.

Jeremey Tahari, 23, chief executive officer and creative director of the fashion company founded by his father, Elie Tahari, first started seeing Golberg at his Hamptons home in 2020. Dr. Hamptons arrived the first time in 15 minutes and whipped out a machine. When Tahari asked what it was, Golberg said, in his heavy Russian accent, “Covid.” Tahari replied, “No, no, I don’t want that.” The doctor clarified that it was a machine to read rapid tests. “This is when nobody had these machines, so it was like a sci-fi movie,” said Tahari.

Golberg also practices in Manhattan and Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay. But it’s in the Hamptons where he and his son Mark come alive, tag-teaming missions 24/7 in a black Range Rover. Mark is the salesman of the two, calling upon connections from his days as a student in New York City private school Avenues to spread the word about his father’s house-call services, which include “the Doctor G lift,” a nonsurgical face-lift, nonsurgical rhinoplasty and a nonsurgical butt lift. The “hottest” treatment of the moment, according to Mark, is NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) injections which can boost energy levels.

Sometimes the demands are trivial, and patients are turned away. Mark bemoaned the Ozempic patients who wanted Dr. Hamptons to administer their weekly shot.

“I literally just got a call from someone like, ‘I feel hungover, give me an IV,’” Mark said.

Rashid said that in summer, “health and wellness kicks in” with her patients. “It’s about being up to speed with the events, the galas, the social life, and just making sure that when they’re exercising, they’re hydrated, that they have enough electrolytes and vitamins.”

Privacy is key for many of the high-profile concierge patients in the Hamptons. Golberg and his son spoke about professional athletes who wanted to keep injuries a secret from their coaches and team doctors, and asked for quiet stem-cell treatments. The ramifications of an injury becoming public can affect the athlete’s entire financial future.

Rashid said her company was often called in to be “the cleanup crew after parties and events” that you would read about on Page Six. “We’ve gone on yachts and helped crew out and the partygoers out. We’ve sutured on site, at Meadow Lane and Dune Road mansions.”

With parties come drugs. Golberg named cocaine as one of the most prevalent recreational drugs in the area. Rashid said laced drugs were a huge problem. “These are not clean drugs and that’s very, very risky,” she said.

“We are the hospital on wheels, and at the same time we’re partying with you on your yachts,” said Rashid. “That may sound a little weird, a doctor partying, but meaning we’re in their homes and very friendly with the whole crew. So we become part of their team that’s taking care of the high profiles here in the Hamptons.”