Author Interviews, Health Care Systems, JAMA, Primary Care / 18.09.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Deborah Korenstein, MD FACP General internist and Chief, General Internal Medicine Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Executive physicals are 1 to 2-day comprehensive health assessments offering disease screening and preventive testing. Large companies can arrange for these evaluations for senior executives. They are often offered by prestigious academic medical centers, but can also be located in less formal settings like spas. They generally include a set of tests that sometimes vary based on patient characteristics. Any tests that are done in response to from findings from executive physicals are billed to health insurance companies. A single 2008 paper described executive physicals and criticized them for being non-evidence based. Since then, executive physicals have grown in popularity, but their nature and impact have not been described. We set out to describe included services and cost of executive physicals at top academic medical centers. (more…)