Would you be willing to pay $1,500 a year for guaranteed speedy access to your physician, lengthy preventive appointments and a sense of old-fashioned personalized care? MDVIP Inc. CEO Edward Goldman is banking on it.

The Boca Raton-based company is pushing a business model dubbed “concierge” or “boutique” medicine. The concept is simple: participating patients pay an annual fee to receive preventative care from a general practitioner, internist or family physician, and 24/7 access to their doctor. In return, physicians limit their practices to 600 patients (versus as many as 3,000), allowing them to offer services such as same- or next-day appointments, limited waiting-room time, home delivery of prescriptions and personal phone calls.

The $1,500 fee gets patients much more than an annual physical. They get tests rarely covered by health insurance, including an extensive risk factor assessment, a detailed physical examination, lab work, heart screenings, a mental health check, vision and hearing testing and exercise and nutrition assessment. They take home a wellness plan and a wallet-sized CDROM with their history, exam summary, lab results, EKG and other related information. If a patient is ill and needs to see the doctor, he or she pays the regular insurance co-pay, or cash, for the office visit.

Goldman says the personalized approach has already helped saved at least one life. One of MDVIP’s patients began to cough up blood while on a plane from Shanghai to Beijing. Her patient history CD contained all the information Chinese doctors needed to assess her medical history. Over the next few days, the MDVIP staff and the Chinese doctor collaborated to determine the best course of treatment for her.

“When we started MDVIP most doctors had never heard of concierge medicine and many skeptics told us patients would never value it,” says Goldman, a retired physician. “Our challenge was two-fold: educating patients about this new approach and finding physicians who want personal patient relationships.”