The Newest Amenity: Doctors Who Make House Calls

Yesterday we told you about a Queens co-op that recently installed a prosaic but badly needed amenity – orderly storage lockers in the once-cluttered basement. That humble storage room can’t compare with the spiraling amenities in many new condo developments, which range from climbing walls to golf simulators, wine cellars, saltwater pools, and pet spas. Now add health care to the list. 

At the Hudson Yards mega-project now rising on the West Side of Manhattan, a medical clinic will be one of the amenities for the exclusive use of people who live or work in a building developed by the Related Companies, the New York Times reports. The 18,000-square-foot clinic will be run by the Mount Sinai Health System at 55 Hudson Yards, a 51-story office tower under construction at 11th Avenue and West 34th Street. It will be open seven days a week, but not 24 hours a day; doctors will be available by phone after hours. 

The Mount Sinai clinic, scheduled to open next winter, is not a full-fledged hospital: It will not have a traditional emergency room and will not have any beds for overnight stays. Members will be able to call doctors on their cellphones at night and on weekends, said Dr. Evan Flatow, president of Mount Sinai West. And in an expansion of existing programs, Mount Sinai will offer house calls at Hudson Yards, dispatching doctors to offices and apartments as needs arise. 

The idea of a health clinic as an amenity wasn’t something that occurred to Related until the company began talking to buyers at 15 Hudson Yards about what made for an ideal place to live, says Jeff T. Blau, Related’s chief executive who also serves on Mount Sinai’s board of directors. “They were saying they like having their doctors around the corner,” Blau says, “and when we thought about it we realized there were no doctors around the corner, because this neighborhood didn’t exist before.”