A New Twist in Concierge Medicine
For better or for worse, in sickness and in stitches needed, X-rays required, chest pains persisting, we relinquish several hours of our lives and succumb to the necessary emergency room visit. Such ventures require patience and luck, for both wait times and bedside manner, navigating nurses and doctors galore. If you knew of a loophole to avoid the ER, would you take it?
For patients in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Palm Beach, lean in. “In 2020 I got a call from Sollis, then a small New York company with one location,” says Dr. Scott Braunstein, then a top physician and clinical instructor at LA’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. “They asked, ‘how would you like to lead your own ER where no one has to wait and providers can spend as long as they want with patients?’” Braunstein took the gamble, leaving his secure, respected post and demanding caseload requirements.
The bet hit and Braunstein, now the company’s national medical director, currently oversees 11 Sollis Health (sollishealth.com) locations, including four flagships (one in each major city) that are open 24/7 and always staffed with ER doctors, ER nurses, lab techs, and receptionists. Dedicated care-navigation teams for scheduling, transportation logistics, referrals, and aftercare provide additional support remotely, so all members do when they need medical attention is call, text, or come in. Lobbies styled like luxury hotels each have a signature scent, and the staff treats you more like you are checking in on vacation than a cog in an overcrowded health care system.
To be technical, the centers, not connected to hospitals, are not true emergency rooms. They are top-level urgent cares that refer less than one percent of cases to the ER (an average urgent care sends 7 percent). When they do require transfer, patients arrive with a detailed case file to avoid redundant intake and testing and have access to their team of Sollis advocates by phone. “A lot of our members say that having Sollis is like having a doctor in the family,” says Braunstein. “We talk to the hospital staff, ask the right questions, and translate what’s wrong and what will be treated.” Sollis even has the trusted privilege of being able to provide the medical info needed to get patients admitted directly to the hospital, avoiding the ER altogether.
For unlimited visits and global telehealth support, unlimited testing and lab work, on-site diagnostics, and expedited access to top specialists, membership fees begin at $3,500 annually, and new members can opt in for a complimentary Prenuvo torso scan ($999 value). Special pricing is available for family plans and employers can access bulk options if they wish to subsidize membership costs for their teams. Primary care physicians work hand in hand with the concept, since clients with memberships take the pressure off their offices; doctors know their patients have somewhere trusted to go in case of an emergency.
Braunstein, who had been weeding through 40 cases per eight-hour shift at the hospital, hasn’t struggled recruiting doctors to join him. “We don’t hire doctors who are right out of training because we want them to have seen everything. We want doctors to become well-rounded in a hospital setting and then come to us,” he says. “And I’ll tell you that the number of physicians who come and then leave is zero.”
At the end of the day, physicians want to do their jobs well, and Sollis has been thoughtfully designed to make that possible. “I can run a bunch of tests that end up telling me nothing,” Braunstein says. “But had I spent 10 extra minutes talking to the patient, I could have figured out what was really going on. Sollis is a very rewarding way to practice and getting back that precious time with the people we serve hits on the reason physicians went into medicine.” Thus, members experience a kind of service and medical care from Sollis doctors that is becoming increasingly difficult to find.
