Dr Sabine Donnai three years ago founded a business aiming to provide seamless healthcare to the UHNW. Here, she discusses the health and lifestyle requirements of this exclusive client segment.

A growing niche of service providers are developing their business models around delivering a seamless healthcare service to the ultra-wealthy, as the realization that this client segment has a unique set of health and lifestyle needs has dawned. But as with delivering any kind of service to UHNW clients, both the stakes and the expectations are high.

One business tackling such a task is Viavi – headquartered on London’s famous Harley Street and a partner of the concierge business Quintessentially – which works with individuals, families and family offices internationally. The firm also has bases in all of Quintessentially’s global offices.

It was founded three years ago by Dr Sabine Donnai, who after many years in preventive medicine thought there was a need for an extra layer to healthcare bringing together all of its facets and making them function complementarily.

Although Dr Donnai is reticent to quote firm figures, she says Viavi has seen strong growth in its services, and that while new client joiners are rising, the most encouraging sign is that contract renewals are “running at very close to 100 per cent.” On the back of this she expects turnover to grow by some 25 per cent this year.

Filling a gap

“Many private hospitals are very, very good, but remain ubiquitous. There was a need for a service that was very personalized, and we were keen to deliver something with no borders – geographical or in terms of the type of healthcare,” Dr Donnai says, talking to Family Wealth Report in an interview.

“It became an expensive service so we targeted the HNW client segment, and looked at their needs: they travel a lot, they often have residences in many countries, they work with a variety of consultants, but they had nothing pulling all this together. And because the ultra-wealthy have an intimate circle of trust because of concerns of confidentiality issues they often don’t seek help beyond the trusted small circle, which often can lead to not very objective, independent advice being given or not by the best expertise.”

“Different physicians in different countries need to know what’s going on, so there needs to be continuity between someone having a knee operation in Switzerland and the physiotherapist they work with back at home,” she explains. “And what we found is that from a preventive side, people weren’t really managed.”

Saving time

However, “preventive” doesn’t mean trying to prepare for all events, Dr Donnai says, and therefore wasting time.

“Time is the UHNW’s most precious commodity. There are guidelines and tests to see what preventive measures are right for you and this makes the process more efficient. It has to be very focused,” she says. “This is an outcome-driven rather than process-driven service, because the HNW are very time poor.”

Viavi’s offering is essentially an overlay, a network bringing together and facilitating its clients’ various healthcare providers, while maintaining in-depth knowledge on clients’ health backgrounds and providing proactive health management.

“We don’t replace their current clinical support, but we provide the access globally, because clients’ local provision won’t necessarily have the international knowledge,” says Dr Donnai.

She stresses at this point that Viavi does not work on a “partnership basis” with any healthcare providers; there are no commercial or fee-sharing agreements in place and through this it remains independent. But providing this kind of service clearly requires an extensive network and she says that while the firm certainly has a “black book,” this is by no means all it is.

“We are not a database. We take responsibility and accountability for the most important decisions,” she tells FWR.

The network is necessary, however, for those times when clients’ needs crop up away from home. “If a client is, for example, in Peru and has no healthcare provider there and suddenly needs an operation without moving, the firm will take control of that situation,” says Dr Donnai.

Its general policy is to get a client to the nearest centre of excellence for the relevant problem, but if he or she is unable or unwilling to move they will bring the necessary care to the client. A recent case saw Viavi fly a Parisian doctor to a stroke patient in Bologna, Italy, because this was what it viewed as the best course of action.

Many of its clients, says Dr Donnai, hand over responsibility for their most important healthcare decisions to the firm, including such extreme responsibilities as when to turn off a life-support machine.

“We will be that overarching person that knows them intimately and is concerned with keeping them healthy.”

Lifestyles of the rich and famous

As well as the most serious, life-saving side of providing healthcare, working with the needs of the wealthy – who notoriously require an impeccable level of service – requires catering to the smallest of details, from providing a personal trainer while a client is travelling to having nutrients and meals delivered.

Anti-ageing is another key concern of the UHNW and according to Dr Donnai one of their priorities is keeping up their cognitive functions.

For cases where people have complex issues, where they have visited a number of consultants and are unable to get to the bottom of the problem, Viavi offers a “health advocacy” service. Dr Donnai describes this as bringing together the top clinicians in a multi-disciplinary team, because “in these cases patients are often told there’s nothing wrong because the consultants have been too sub-specialized. We take the view: let’s get to the bottom of this.”

Rounding off the interview, Dr Donnai sums up her view of what her business aims to deliver: “In an ideal world, it’s exactly how healthcare should be. It has to be a luxury because it’s expensive, but as a physician not a business person I think it’s the ultimate good.”