Raphael Stevens

Private Medical is at the forefront of a new type of health care for the ultra-wealthy that has taken concierge medicine to a whole new level.
The company, founded by Dr. Jordan Shlain, pioneered a highly personalized, all-in-one service that’s more akin to the most sophisticated family offices for investments.
The rise of family office-style medical practices reflects the surge in wealth among families worth $100 million or more and growing demand for hyper-personalized, data-driven health care from an aging class of billionaires and millionaires.

Dr. Jordan Shlain, founder of Private Medical.
Credit: Jordan Shlain

A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
When people ask Dr. Jordan Shlain to describe his medical practice, he says simply: “It’s a family office for your health.”

“Family offices typically have a goal of preserving wealth,” he said. “Our goal is preserving your health. After the age of 24 you’re a depreciating asset health-wise. So we aim to decrease the slope of the curve for as long as possible.”
As depressing as that sounds for patients, Shlain’s strategy is paying off as a business model. His company, Private Medical, is at the forefront of a new type of health care for the ultra-wealthy that has taken concierge medicine to a whole new level. Rather than simply offering on-call doctors and faster visits, Private Medical has pioneered a highly personalized, all-in-one service that’s more akin to the most sophisticated family offices for investments.
Like family offices, Private Medical has an in-house team to manage a family’s entire health portfolio – from fitness and dietary tracking to longevity research, surgeries and medical emergencies. It now serves more than 1,000 wealthy families, with offices in California — San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills — New York and Miami, and more offices on the way.
Private Medical’s team of 135 physicians, nurses, clinical staff, pharmacists and medical support professionals provides 24/7 on-call service, including home and office visits when needed. Private Medical doesn’t advertise and gets most of its business through referrals. It prefers to call patients “members.”
Shlain declined to give specifics on price, but clients of Private Medical say it charges $40,000 a year for each adult patient and $25,000 per patient under the age of 18. The annual fees cover the cost of visits, tests and procedures in the office, but not hospitalization.

The rise of family office-style medical practices – some of which are charging up to $60,000 a year for membership – reflects the surge in wealth among families worth $100 million or more and growing demand for hyper-personalized, data-driven health care from an aging class of billionaires and millionaires.
The market for concierge and personalized medical services for the wealthy is expected to grow by more than 50% by 2032, to nearly $11 billion a year, according to Precedence Research.

Shlain says insurance companies, overloaded doctors and inflated prices have turned the health-care system into what he calls a “sick care system.” Private Medical, for those who can afford it, aims to be proactive, running frequents tests and diagnostics on patients, constantly updating them with new research and science, and getting detailed information about a patient’s lifestyle, habits, family lives and work lives, Shlain said.
Shlain, whose father was a laparoscopic surgeon and whose mother had a Ph.D. in psychology, started out doing house calls for the Mandarin Oriental hotel in San Francisco. He took a “crash course” in high-end hospitality from top hotel concierges and realized health care should be more like five-star hotel service than an impersonal system of long wait times and error-filled diagnoses.  
“I will know everything about you to help you make the best decisions in your life,” he said. “I’m 70% doctor, 15% psychologist, 10% rabbi and 1% friend.”
Private Medical’s job is often to protect its patients from the broader medical system, Shlain said. One of his patients, a 38-year-old entrepreneur and big donor to a major hospital, was admitted for a bowel obstruction. The hospital CEO and chief of surgery rushed to start performing surgery. Shlain pushed back and recommended waiting a day or two. The patient recovered on his own while in the hospital “and walked out without surgery,” Shlain said.
Shlain also creates personalized medical kits for patients to take with them when traveling or working. When one patient scratched his cornea playing beach volleyball in the Bahamas, the patient was able to treat his eye with a prescription in his medical kit rather than searching for a hospital on one of the nearby islands.
Like most services for the ultra-wealthy, the main benefit of Private Medical is access. Shlain has spent over 20 years developing relationships with more than 4,000 specialists in various medical and scientific fields to connect patients with the right person for their specific needs.
With roots in Silicon Valley and many tech clients, Private Medical is also connected to biotech startups doing cutting-edge research and exploring new treatments. Shlain said Private Medical conducts due diligence on four or five new companies a month to keep pace with fast-changing science and research.
When one patient was diagnosed with severe depression, Shlain worked with a new “precision psychiatric” group at Stanford that does an MRI of the brain and uses connectomes (a map of the neural connections in the brain) to determine which medication was best for treatment.
“He got the right medication, and now he’s better,” Shlain said.
Private Medical also prides itself on its technology, developed with some of the top CEOs and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Its platform helps both doctors and patients easily access data, manage appointments and workflows.
Two big areas for his wealthy patients are longevity and sleep. With longevity, Shlain said there’s no magic bullet or diet or medication to roll back time, even for billionaires. The real goal, he said is to “enable you to live with your physical and mental faculties intact for as long as possible with the fewest high-quality interactions with the health-care system as possible.”
“Your good outcome is our income,” he said.
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Disney Entertainment CTO Aaron LaBerge is leaving the company.
LaBerge will stay on until June and a search for his replacement is already underway.
His departure is for personal reasons, according to a company memo, but continues a brain drain of veteran Disney executives in recent years.

The Walt Disney company logo is displayed on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during morning trading on Dec. 1, 2023.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

Aaron LaBerge, the chief technology officer for Disney Entertainment and ESPN, is leaving the company, according to an internal memo.
LaBerge is taking a job as CTO of PENN Entertainment, which operates ESPN Bet, the sports media company’s licensed online sportsbook. He’ll be responsible for driving technology strategy as a top executive in the company’s interactive division. LaBerge is leaving for personal reasons related to his family and will stay on at Disney until June, the memo said.

LaBerge has been a key figure in developing Disney’s streaming services and, more recently, integrating advertising into Disney+. He’s also led efforts to unify Hulu and Disney+ within one streaming application, which debuted last month.
At ESPN, LaBerge has been a central figure behind the company’s streaming services, including ESPN+, the upcoming sports streaming application co-owned by Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox, and ESPN’s flagship streaming service that will launch in 2025.
His departure adds to a growing list of veteran Disney executives who have left the company in recent years. They include former CEO Bob Chapek, former head of streaming Kevin Mayer, ex-finance chief Christine McCarthy, former Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn, former Disney general counsel Alan Braverman, ex-head of communications Zenia Mucha, and former president of Walt Disney Pictures, Sean Bailey.
“We want to thank Aaron for the contributions he has made and the leadership he has provided at Disney over his 20 years,” said ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro and Disney Entertainment co-Chairmen Dana Walden and Alan Bergman in an internal note to employees. “It is a silver lining that he will continue to help Disney and ESPN win, as he transitions to a role at PENN Entertainment — where he will be a key partner in the continued growth and success of ESPN BET (and the rest of their Interactive business).”
According to his biography, LaBerge has been responsible for “helping set the vision and strategic leadership for how the Company uses technology to enable storytelling and innovation, drive its business, and create amazing consumer experiences with entertainment and sports content.”

A search for LaBerge’s successor is already underway, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked to remain anonymous because the transition plan is private. Chris Lawson, currently Disney’s executive vice president of content operations and one of LaBerge’s direct reports, will take over LaBerge’s job on an interim basis when he departs.
LaBerge first joined Disney in the late 1990s as part of the company’s takeover of Starwave, a Paul Allen-founded company that partnered with ESPN before Disney fully acquired it it in 1998.

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Delta is hiking wages, including 5% pay increases for flight attendants and ground handlers.
The carrier is the most profitable of the U.S. airlines.
The pay increase matches a raise it gave workers last year.

Delta Air Lines jets are seen on a taxiway at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta on Dec. 22, 2021.
Elijah Nouvelage | Reuters

Delta Air Lines said it is raising staff pay by another 5% this year as the country’s most profitable airline prepares for the busy summer travel season.
The pay increase, which starts June 1, applies to workers including flight attendants, ground handlers, mechanics and some office workers, among others. It does not apply to pilots, who are unionized and ratified a contract last year for big pay increases after stagnant wages during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA launched a unionization campaign of Delta’s cabin crew in late 2019.

Delta raised staff pay by 5% last year and the pay hike unveiled Monday is the third the Atlanta-based carrier has announced since 2022. With the new raises, starting pay at Delta’s mainline operation in the U.S. will rise to $19 an hour from $16.55.
“With this increase in base pay and starting rates, we continue our commitment to provide Delta people with industry-leading total compensation for industry-leading performance,” CEO Ed Bastian said in a memo to staff on Monday.

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Robin Hayes will run Airbus’ North America business.
Hayes left JetBlue in February, saying he stepped down on the “advice of my doctor and after talking to my wife, it’s time I put more focus on my health and well-being.”
Hayes’ departure announcement from JetBlue came weeks before a judge knocked down JetBlue’s plan to purchase budget carrier Spirit Airlines.

Robin Hayes, chief executive officer of JetBlue Airways Corp., speaks during an Economic Club of New York event in New York, US, on Wednesday, March 29, 2023.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Former JetBlue Airways CEO Robin Hayes will run Airbus’ North America arm, replacing Jeffrey Knittel, the airplane maker said Monday.
Hayes left JetBlue in February after the airline’s planned acquisition of Spirit Airlines fell apart following a federal judge’s decision to block the deal in an antitrust lawsuit brought by the Justice Department.

Hayes, a longtime airline executive who has also held senior leadership roles at British Airways, will start in June. He will be managing Airbus’ business in the region, where it has expanded production of narrow-body jets in Mobile, Alabama. It has customers including Delta Air Lines, his former employer JetBlue and the carrier’s acquisition target Spirit.
When Hayes announced his departure from JetBlue in January, he said, “Extraordinary challenges and pressure of this job have taken their toll, and on the advice of my doctor and after talking to my wife, it’s time I put more focus on my health and well-being.”

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Cricket world cup matches will take place in the U.S. for the first time ever in June, marking a push to grow the sport in North America.
Cricket is hugely popular in countries such as India and Pakistan. The average value of an Indian Premier League team has exceeded $1 billion, according to Forbes, and investors are taking notice.
Experts and fans say the historic world cup could open the doors for the sport’s future in the U.S.

USA Cricket Vice-Captain Aaron Jones poses next to a giant cricket ball, installed at a marketplace to mark 100 days to go for the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, in Miami, Florida, on Feb. 22, 2024.
Chandan Khanna | Afp | Getty Images

A major cricket world cup is coming to U.S. soil for the first time in June as the sport sets out to chart its future in the U.S.
Cricket, a game similar to baseball, originated in England and has long been popular there. But the sport has boomed in India, the world’s most populous country, as well as some other former British colonies.

In the U.S., it is mostly immigrants and their children who enjoy cricket. But in 2023, the sport got a boost as Major League Cricket debuted in the U.S. with six teams: the Los Angeles Knight Riders, MI New York, San Francisco Unicorns, Seattle Orcas, Texas Super Kings and Washington Freedom.
And now, the U.S. men’s national cricket team will represent the home country in this year’s International Cricket Council Men’s T20 World Cup. The teams play in the Twenty20, or T20, format, the shortest and most popular form of the sport. While traditional cricket matches can last as long as five days, a T20 match typically lasts around three hours.
This year’s world cup is co-hosted by the U.S. and the West Indies and will take place in three U.S. stadiums — in Texas, Florida and New York — as well as several locations in the West Indies.
“This is a historic opportunity for the U.S.,” said former ESPN cricket writer Peter Della Penna.

Success in India

While it hasn’t broken through in the U.S., cricket has seen success in such countries as Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa and the West Indies. But it’s arguably made the biggest mark in India, where it’s the most popular sport in a country of more than 1.4 billion people, according to research firm Statista.

Cricket is already a big business in the Asian subcontinent. In 2022, it accounted for 85% of India’s national spending on sports, according to ISPO, which hosts trade shows for the sports business.
And viewership continues to break records. Disney said its Disney Star Network broadcast of the professional Indian Premier League, or IPL, tournament in 2023 saw a record 505 million viewers in India, making it the first one to draw more than half a billion viewers.
The average value of an IPL team has exceeded $1 billion, according to Forbes, and investors are taking notice. In June 2021, private equity firm RedBird took a 15% stake in IPL team Rajasthan Royals for $37.5 million.
A year later, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the country’s governing body for the sport, sold television and digital broadcasting rights for a record $6.2 billion. That gave the IPL the second-highest per-match value for a sporting league in the world, behind the NFL, according to Jay Shah, honorary secretary of the BCCI.
The early June world cup matchups will bring some of that star power to the U.S., with a high-profile India-Pakistan competition and culminating in a U.S.-India match.
“[The U.S.-India] match has already been sold out with 34,000 seats at the venue in New York,” Della Penna said. “That just gives you a sense of the magnitude of the opportunity that [the U.S. is] going to have during the world cup — with a television audience that’s unprecedented for any match that the U.S. has ever been involved with before — when you consider the Indian market and other markets like England or Australia.”
The ICC’s decision to host part of the world cup in the U.S. — and especially the highly anticipated India-Pakistan match — was a strategic move to take advantage of the potential for growth in the country, according to USA Cricket. The U.S. will host the tournament a few years before cricket comes to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games.
Della Penna, who has covered cricket for nearly two decades, also said the move is financially motivated.
“[The ICC] made sure to put the India and Pakistan match on U.S. soil because they know there’s a couple million people in the [South Asian] diaspora who are massive cricket fans,” Della Penna said.

Cricketers Liam Plunkett, center left, and Dwayne Bravo, center right, pose for pictures with children during a media day to mark 100 days to go until the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 co-hosted in the West Indies and the U.S., at Times Square in New York City, Feb. 22, 2024.
Mike Stobe | Icc | Getty Images

Tasmai Krishnan, a teenage cricket enthusiast in India and host of podcast “Cricstatic,” said the sport is an “integral part” of Indian culture. With new sports such as pickleball gathering popularity, Tasmai said he hopes cricket will also grow in the U.S. and he’s interested to see how the U.S. will fit into the global cricket circuit after the world cup.
“Coming from an Indian perspective, this opens another range of cricket here because it unlocks another country that is going to be a fierce competitor in the future,” Tasmai said. “This is a great learning opportunity for the U.S. team, and to see a nation like the U.S. participating, it really fills my heart with joy.”

‘A dream come true’

The match between the U.S. and India will strike an interesting balance for Indian Americans in choosing which country to cheer for, Della Penna said.
One of those people is George Samuel, a resident of Nassau County, New York, where some of the world cup games will take place. Samuel is the head coach and director of Queens United Cricket Academy, which cultivates cricket skills for children and teens. Though he immigrated to the U.S. from India in 1987, he also coached cricket in England, Australia and South Africa. When he got to New York, he wanted to pass down the sport.
“I was super excited,” he said about learning the world cup would be taking place in his backyard. “I never thought that this was going to happen when I came to this country — it’s a dream come true.”
Samuel, who already has his tickets secured, said he believes this world cup will be a launching pad for cricket to take off in the U.S. — but he’s not rooting for either side in the final match.
“I like to see good cricket. I don’t have loyalty. I want to see the U.S. show good talent, and I want to see that good bat and bowl and lots of sixers,” he said. A “sixer” is the cricket equivalent of a baseball home run.
Samuel’s teenage son, Jeremy, said that despite his family’s Indian roots, he’s cheering for the U.S., the country he was born in, because he wants to play cricket professionally and for the U.S. team.
Jeremy also has his tickets for the world cup, along with his friends, none of whom have witnessed a major cricket match before.
“It’s really exciting to be able to watch it here — it’s 15 minutes away from my house,” he said. “It’s a big moment for us to finally see one. … It makes me feel happy because now more people will know about cricket and will start to play it.”
Others are more interested in supporting the Indian team against its traditional rivals.
California resident Mythili Sankaran, who said she has watched every match India has played in the last 25 years, said she isn’t even watching the U.S.-India match and is traveling to New York only for the India-Pakistan installment of the world cup.
“Growing up in India with the Indian team, we were always the underdogs. Now, India is one of the most, if not the most, promising and powerful team in world cricket,” said Sankaran, who said she played cricket at the university level in India before immigrating to the U.S.
“To be able to watch all these international stars, to watch an India-Pakistan match in the U.S. — I didn’t think I’d do that in my lifetime,” she said. “I think the cricket audience in the U.S. is maturing largely due to Indian Americans, and it’s about time.”
And ultimately, Sankaran said, she hopes the world cup marks the start of a new era.
“What I’m hoping is … people get to see women’s cricket in the U.S. as well,” she said. “The U.S. women’s cricket team is actually doing quite well, so I’m hoping that there will be a lot more awareness and visibility to that.” More