Inside the medical concierge business – an interview with London Medical Concierge’s Kirsty Ettrick

MillGens sat down with Kirsty Ettrick, the pioneering founder of London Medical Concierge, to discover what she’ll be doing for MillGens’ members.

MillGens: You started your business after your husband, Neil, was diagnosed with cancer in 2014. What is London Medical Concierge? 

Kirsty Ettrick: An end-to-end solution for busy people searching for medical answers. If you’ve been diagnosed, we’ll take care of every single thing from that moment onwards, from your medical notes to coordinating specialists, so you can focus on getting well. If you need to sort out health checks, appointments and blood tests for you or your family, we know just the right teams for you to see, and if you need them to come to you at home, we’ll sort that out, too. I describe our service as the Charlie’s Angels of the medical world.  

MG: What difference does a service like LMC make? 

KE: Most doctors know us, so we can make anything happen. A doctor of neurology can come to you at home, we can have a dentist prescribe your antibiotics and send them via courier, and with Covid-19, we’ve been able to reassure people worried about infection through a speedy consultation with one of the respiratory consultants in our network. 

MG: What’s your USP? 

KE: We’re a team of people, not an app. We manage situations one to one. We know our clients – so we’re aware if Grandma is staying and there might be extra needs; we probably also understand the layout of your home and how that could make a difference to what we should provide. Our patients lean on us for support and we are always there. We’ve changed a lot of outcomes for clients. 

MG: What kind of clients do you have? Where do they live? 

KE: Time-poor people who travel a lot, busy families – it’s a mix. Some of our clients love the fact that effectively they’ve got their own medical PA to add to their team. When people are famous or so dedicated to their business that they do nothing else, they really value having one discreet person they can turn to about health matters. We don’t provide services outside of the UK, although we do have clients from overseas who come here for treatment. And we’re also plugged into a network of international specialists we can get help from. 

MG: Who’s been your most interesting client to date? 

KE: Everything we do is completely confidential and we operate with discretion at all times. I can say that we’ve had to do an “intervention” with a popstar one Saturday afternoon. We have another client who likes to have a full-time cardiologist fly around the world with him. And we’ve smuggled quite a few celebrities into the maternity Lindo Wing at London’s St Mary’s Hospital. 

MG: What’s your proudest moment? 

KE: Attending the wedding of my first-ever client, who had been ill with lymphoma and was in remission. That was very special. And being interviewed by GQ last year.  

MG: In your view, what’s the future of the medical concierge business?

KE: Everyone is becoming far more health-aware. People are tuning in to both preventative medicine and personalised clinical medicine – so, from blood testing and acquiring supplements for anything that shows up as currently lacking, such as vitamins, to the benefits of immunotherapy for cancer patients. People know more and they want another level of support. 

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