In the Hamptons, medicine has become a luxury amenity as essential as a private chef or yacht crew — with billionaires and celebrities paying up to six figures a year for concierge doctors who deliver everything from Botox on boats to discreet emergency care at all-night parties.
Physicians like Alexander Golberg — nicknamed “Dr. Hamptons” — told the Wall Street Journal that they have built booming practices on this mix of secrecy and luxury, charging as much as $1,000 per house call.
Golberg and his son Mark race to East End estates in a black Range Rover, carrying injectables, stem-cell vials and emergency gear packed in a Louis Vuitton doctor’s bag and chilled in a caviar cooler.
“We are the hospital on wheels,” Dr. Asma Rashid of Hamptons Boutique Medicine, who admitted her staff is often summoned as the “cleanup crew” after White Parties and late-night galas, told the Journal.
“We’ve gone on yachts and helped crew out and the partygoers out. We’ve sutured on site, at Meadow Lane and Dune Road mansions.”
Privacy is paramount. Pro athletes quietly seek stem-cell injections to hide injuries from coaches, while socialites call for cosmetic touch-ups hours before black-tie events.
Rashid told the Journal that her patients view access to concierge medicine as essential, saying: “Money is not an obstacle.”
The model took off during the pandemic, when Manhattan’s elite decamped to the East End and demanded round-the-clock testing and treatment for the coronavirus.
Now, the services are permanent fixtures. Nationwide chain Sollis Health opened in Water Mill in 2021, joining Casa Health, White Glove Medicine and independents like Golberg and Rashid, who compete to provide 24/7 care for clients who want hospital-level service without ever leaving their estates.
Golberg’s most requested procedure is pure Hamptons theater: Botox on yachts, or “Boat-tox,” as his son calls it.
Partygoers sometimes treat last-minute injections as urgent as medical emergencies. Mark also markets the “Doctor G lift,” a nonsurgical facelift, alongside cosmetic nose and butt lifts. Energy-boosting NAD injections have become another hot seller.
But behind the glamor lurks danger. With cocaine common at Hamptons parties — and rising fears of laced supplies — doctors are often called to handle overdoses or drug-related collapses quietly.
“These are not clean drugs and that’s very, very risky,” Rashid warned.
For high-profile clients, discretion is survival. A publicized drug scare could sink reputations, and for athletes, contracts worth millions. That secrecy keeps demand high.
“We’re in their homes and very friendly with the whole crew,” Rashid said.
“So we become part of their team that’s taking care of the high profiles here in the Hamptons.”
Golberg’s own story is nearly as colorful as his practice. After emigrating from Russia in 1989, he worked in his cousin-in-law’s cubic zirconia business before building a career in medicine.
Now board-certified in family, osteopathic, anti-aging and regenerative medicine, he credits the TV show “Royal Pains” — about a doctor catering to the Hamptons elite — as inspiration for his career.
Today, he and his son tag-team calls day and night, marketing themselves as the real-life version.
Sometimes they decline requests — such as Ozempic patients who just want their weekly injections handled.
Rashid told the Journal that summer makes patients even more dependent on concierge medicine.
“It’s about being up to speed with the events, the galas, the social life, and just making sure that when they’re exercising, they’re hydrated, that they have enough electrolytes and vitamins,” Rashid said.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
