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August 3, 2026•14 min read

Executive Health in San Francisco: UCSF, Stanford, Sutter, and Mayo

By Paul Abramson, MD

San Francisco has no shortage of marketing for executive health exams, but the programs themselves are fewer and harder to access than they appear. UCSF has no public program to book. Stanford's former Executive Medicine page now leads to an invitation-only concierge practice. Sutter offers a bookable program in Palo Alto, while Mayo remains the best-known destination model. I run an independent executive health program in San Francisco, so my interest in this comparison is obvious. I also believe a candid map is more useful than another brochure. Here it is.

What the search results will not tell you

Start with the institution most people search for first.

UCSF does not publicly offer an executive physical. As of August 2026, there is no program page on its patient site, no enrollment path, and nothing to schedule. What UCSF does have, based on its own 2026 physician recruiting materials, is a small, long-standing executive health and concierge practice inside its Division of General Internal Medicine. UCSF's own job listings describe individual physician panels of approximately 200 patients, sixty-to-ninety-minute physicals, a practice expanding from four to five physicians, and a concurrent search for a medical director of executive health. The listings also describe coordination with UCSF's international and donor services. The program is real, established, and growing. It is also unadvertised: what it includes, what it costs, and how one becomes a patient are not publicly described. If you have searched for it and found nothing to book, that is not a failure of your search skills.

Stanford's executive program is no longer publicly described. Stanford Health Care once ran a well-known one-day Executive Medicine program serving large Silicon Valley employers. Today that program's web address leads to Stanford's concierge primary care practice in Atherton. The practice is invitation-only, with a phone line for existing patients, though prospective patients can request an informational interview. The concierge page makes no mention of executive physicals, and its membership fees are billed directly and cannot be submitted to insurance or Medicare. Stanford does not publicly state whether it still performs executive exams for corporate clients.

Sutter publicly offers a bookable program in Palo Alto, built around employer accounts. The Sutter Health executive health program, historically associated with the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, is the one program among these four that you can book locally; Sutter dates it to 1956 and calls it the oldest executive health program in the country. It is candid about its audience: employees in "critical and stressful positions," company accounts, and services arranged with employers. The visit is built around a physical exam, laboratory work, and a dietitian session, with a menu of add-on studies from carotid ultrasound to echocardiography. There is an executive lounge, and coordinators escort you between appointments. Results arrive as a written summary within seven days, and the report can be mailed to your personal physician on request. No price is published.

Mayo Clinic is the destination model. More on Mayo below, because it deserves a fair description rather than a caricature.

The pattern worth noticing: of the four names people search for, one has no public program to book, one no longer publicly describes its program, and the two that publicly offer bookings do not publish a price. For a category marketed on clarity and control, the market itself is remarkably opaque. We publish our starting price: an executive health evaluation with us starts at $12,500. I believe patients comparing programs at this level deserve at least that much transparency from everyone.

A note on scope: this map covers the institutional programs people search for by name. The venture-backed longevity clinics selling whole-body MRI and multi-cancer blood panels are a different category with different tradeoffs; I have written separately about what a clean full-body MRI actually tells you.

How the Mayo model works

Mayo Clinic's Executive Health Program has run for more than fifty years, serves more than twenty thousand executives a year, and is offered as a benefit by more than a thousand companies. The program is offered in Scottsdale, Jacksonville, Rochester, and London. Visits last one to three days, typically two. The schedule is consolidated, lab results are fast-tracked, specialist consults are prioritized, and the visit begins and ends with unhurried time with your Mayo physician. Everything happens on one campus because Mayo integrates its specialists, imaging, and laboratory testing, and no independent practice can replicate walking a single corridor from consult to scanner to specialist.

Mayo is also clear about what the program is and is not. Its own patient materials state that Executive Health is not a membership program, does not provide around-the-clock physician access, and requires executive patients to maintain a local primary care physician throughout the year, down to medication refills. Between annual visits, the program offers wellness coaching, newsletters, and a speaker series. Mayo separately offers two annual concierge memberships with around-the-clock physician access: Mayo Clinic 365 in Rochester and the Medallion Program in Scottsdale. The distinction is structural: a concentrated periodic evaluation and continuous care are different services, sold separately.

On cost, Mayo publishes no number. Its materials say most of the clinical portion is typically billed to insurance, and that the separate executive services fee, paid out of pocket or by your employer, covers the lounge, the consolidated scheduling, and the concierge staff. Published research places the price of these programs in context: a 2020 analysis in JAMA Internal Medicine of executive screening programs at eighteen top-ranked cardiology hospitals found prices from $995 to $25,000. Circulating third-party estimates have placed Mayo's program in the range of $5,000 to $11,000 depending on age, sex, and add-ons; those figures are not Mayo's published pricing, and they predate current rates.

Why sequence and follow-through matter

The same 2020 analysis made a second observation: many of these programs include cardiovascular tests, such as coronary calcium scoring and exercise stress testing in people without symptoms, that go beyond what screening guidelines recommend for asymptomatic adults. I order some of those same tests. The difference is the order of operations. A standardized battery decides what to test before anyone has met you. A physician who has taken your history, reviewed your records, and understood your family risk decides what to test because of you. The same test can have a different clinical rationale in a 42-year-old marathon runner than in a 58-year-old with a concerning family history, and whether to order it at all should depend on which one you are. I have written elsewhere about what the evidence says executive physicals are actually worth; the short version is that the value lives in targeting and follow-through, not in the length of the test menu.

And follow-through is where the periodic model, by its own design, hands off. Mayo requires you to keep a doctor at home. Sutter mails your report to your physician on request. The physician receiving that report did not order the tests, was not there when the findings were fresh, and must fit one more document into a schedule built for brief visits. In my practice we regularly meet executives who arrive carrying a beautifully produced institutional report, months old, with findings nobody ever acted on. The exam was excellent. What came after had no owner.

The independent alternative

Our version of the executive health exam inverts the sequence. It begins with a sixty-minute physician intake, by video, before a single test is ordered: your history, your family risks, your medications, your sleep, your actual concerns. The testing panel is then built for you. The in-person work (imaging, specialty exams, and a thorough physical) is compressed into one efficient day in downtown San Francisco; labs are drawn near your home or office beforehand. The evaluation unfolds over three to four weeks and includes more than four hours of direct physician time. It ends with a written report and a working session to go through what we found and what to do about it.

Two things distinguish the structure.

First, independence with connection. We are part of no hospital system, but we hold admitting privileges at CPMC and maintain clinical relationships with UCSF and Stanford, with access to the health records systems at UCSF, Stanford, and Sutter. Your history gets assembled from the records that actually exist, and when you already have specialists in those systems, we communicate with them directly rather than working from a summary.

Second, ongoing care is optional, and the choice is explicit. The standalone evaluation is complete in itself: a report and recommendations, not an ongoing care commitment. Patients who want the physician who found the issue to remain their physician can continue into our concierge practice as a separate membership, where follow-through happens with the team that already knows the whole story and specialty referrals across any of those systems are chosen by clinical judgment rather than institutional affiliation. The person who ordered the test is then the person who acts on the result.

A practical note on cost, because structure matters more than sticker price. Our standalone evaluation is deliberately a bundled, flat-fee product: one price and no claims administration, which is often the simplest arrangement for a company providing the exam as a benefit and for an individual who wants a single figure. There is a second door: patients who join our concierge practice first can have the same evaluation performed as part of ongoing medical care, in which case the laboratories and imaging centers performing medically indicated testing can often bill the patient's insurance directly. Our own physician fees are out of network under either structure, and screening-only studies such as whole-body MRI generally are not covered by insurance. Neither door is the discount door; they are different structures for different situations, and we will tell you which one fits yours.

How to choose among the models

If you want everything done in one or two days, you are willing to travel, your company is paying, and you have a primary care physician at home who will own the follow-up, Mayo is a rational choice, and its integrated experience is a genuine strength. That is the case the destination model was built for, and for that case it works.

If your employer offers the Sutter program in Palo Alto as a benefit, it is a real exam with real specialists. Ask one question before you go: who, specifically, will act on the findings afterward, and when.

If you are arranging this for someone else, as an executive assistant or a People team, scheduling runs directly between you and our nursing team.

If you are hoping UCSF or Stanford will sell you their institutional version, as of this writing you cannot buy it publicly, whatever the search results imply.

And if what you want is an evaluation built around your history rather than a standard menu, performed in San Francisco without cross-country travel, by a physician who can remain your physician afterward, that is the independent concierge model. It is what we built and why we built it, and it is not the right answer for everyone. The choosing framework above is the same one I use when someone asks me privately.

Common questions

Does UCSF have an executive health program?

Not publicly. UCSF operates a small, established executive health and concierge practice, confirmed by its own 2026 physician recruiting materials, but it is not advertised on UCSF's patient site and has no public enrollment path. Publicly bookable alternatives include Sutter's program in Palo Alto and destination programs such as Mayo Clinic.

What if what I really want is a physician connected to UCSF?

Many people searching for UCSF executive health actually want a physician who can work closely with UCSF, coordinate with its specialists, and see its records. We are independent of all hospital systems, but we hold admitting privileges at CPMC, maintain clinical relationships with UCSF and Stanford, and have access to the health records systems at UCSF, Stanford, and Sutter. In ongoing concierge care those connections are used day to day; in a standalone evaluation they mean your existing specialists' records inform the workup.

How much does an executive physical cost in the Bay Area?

Institutional programs rarely publish prices. Published research on executive screening programs at top-ranked hospitals found prices from $995 to $25,000. Circulating third-party estimates place Mayo Clinic's program around $5,000 to $11,000; those are not Mayo's published prices. We publish our own pricing on our executive health page.

Can my company arrange this as a benefit?

Yes. Many companies provide executive health evaluations as a benefit for senior leadership or as key-person risk management, and exams can be arranged and invoiced through a corporate account, with scheduling handled between the executive's assistant and our nursing team. The executive's own time commitment is the intake conversation, the testing day, and the wrap-up session.

Does insurance cover an executive physical?

Partially, and it depends on how the exam is structured. Mayo Clinic states that the majority of the clinical portion of its visits is typically billed to insurance, with a separate out-of-pocket executive services fee; our standalone evaluation takes the opposite structure, a single bundled fee with no claims administration. Patients who join our concierge practice first can have the evaluation performed as part of ongoing care, in which case medically indicated labs and imaging can often be billed to insurance by the facilities performing them; screening-only studies such as whole-body MRI generally are not covered by insurance.

Is the Mayo Clinic executive physical worth the travel?

For the right person, yes. If you want a one-to-three-day consolidated evaluation on a single campus that integrates its specialists and testing, and you have a primary care physician at home to own the follow-up, Mayo's program is a well-established version of that model. Mayo itself requires executive patients to maintain a local primary care physician, so the travel buys the evaluation, not ongoing care.

What happens after an executive physical?

At institutional programs, you receive a written report, typically shared with your personal physician, and follow-up care is yours or theirs to arrange. In our practice the evaluation ends with a working session on the findings, and patients can choose to continue with the same physician team through concierge membership.

How we practice at My Doctor Medical Group

We built our executive health evaluation the way we practice medicine: know the patient first, test for reasons, compress the logistics rather than the thinking, and be there afterward if you want us to be. If you are comparing these programs and want a physician's honest read on which model fits your situation, you can contact us. If the right answer for you is a plane ticket to Rochester, we will say so.

This content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Consult your physician before making changes to your health regimen.

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