Doctor diagnoses problems with extensive executive physicals

Executive physicals are marketed as the ultimate medical checkups for consumers. In these one- or two-day sessions, executives undergo a battery of high- and low-tech medical tests and comprehensive evaluations by physicians. But Brian Rank, MD, medical director of HealthPartners Medical Group and Clinics of Minnesota, argues they do not live up to their promise in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Rank says the physicals are often just expensive, unnecessary tests.