Entertainment

The doctor is ‘in’

There’s no better feeling than kicking up your heels with a friend — but it really is a thing of beauty when you’re on the delivery table and the friend is your OB-GYN. For Gail, a 32-year-old Long Island mother of two who asked that her real name not be used, it was that close relationship with her male doctor that turned what could have been a nerve-racking delivery into a joy.

“We were all hysterically laughing during the delivery,” recalls the former ad sales exec. “[And] he took time to ask about the family, and always remembered the little things.”

Gail adored her longtime doctor, who delivered her first daughter. But once she settled into her new-mom clique, the pressure was on to dump her old doc and get herself a “designer doc” she could brag about.

“One girl who lives in the area kept her OB-GYN in the city just because she wanted to say she delivered at Columbia-Presbyterian,” she says. “There’s pressure to say you’re using the top doc and giving birth at one of the better hospitals.”

Enter Anita Sadaty, a high-powered OB-GYN whose Great Neck waiting room is always filled with movers and shakers (and major money-makers, including J.Lo, whose twins Sadaty delivered in 2008).

About a year after the birth of her first child, and before getting pregnant with her second, Gail unceremoniously jumped ship to Sadaty — who’s always impossibly polished, put-together and in Gail’s opinion, a bit of a cold fish. She’s also a high-risk specialist, though that doesn’t concern Gail, who has a history of good health.

The contrast between her former doctor and new one was striking. Gail admits she regrets making the switch — but despite her ambivalence, she’s sticking with Sadaty. “It’s too much for me to change again,” she says.

“The office has all the latest and best technology, but her personal treatment leaves a lot to be desired . . . compared to my old doctor.”

Gail isn’t the only one succumbing to the siren song of New York’s boldface doctors.

They’re New York’s hottest docs, with client rosters made up of the rich and famous. Once it’s revealed a celebrity sees a certain high-profile doctor, the waiting room is trampled by patients dumping their longtime physicians for so-called blue-chip ones.

But is it all just a lot of smoke and mirrors — or have these physicians to the famous earned their reputation?

Gail freely admits status was a factor. “I thought she must be good if J.Lo used her,” she confesses.

Joan Gage is a journalist who’s written extensively about “destination doctors.” Her 1992 Vogue article “Diary of a Face-Lift” was the first of its kind to lift the curtain on the culture of celeb docs. Gage documented her face-lift with Dan Baker, a plastic surgeon who had reportedly worked on Sophia Loren and Meg Ryan.

“You think God is going to kill you for your vanity,” she explains. “People are scared, vulnerable .  .  . sometimes it’s a measure of comfort to hear [celebs] have used these doctors.”

Gage has a crucial piece of advice before you book a celeb doc: “Do your homework and ignore the public hype.”

But some patients say designer docs deserve the hype. Lisa Wexler is crazy about her new dermatologist, Patricia Wexler (no relation), who was once said to be “doing all of Hollywood.” The local radio personality should know: Her sister, “Real Housewife” Jill Zarin, became a fan of the dermatologist three years ago at the urging of her manager. “He told me she’s the best celebrity doctor in the business,” says Zarin, who regularly touted Dr. Wexler on the show.

Zarin thinks she and other celebs are doing a public service by touting designer docs: “Me and other celebrities do the homework for them so they know who’s the best,” she says.

Ellen Barkin has cooed for years about her favorite derm — and landed a boy toy in his 20s — so Wexler must be doing something right.

“She’s this big for a reason,” Lisa Wexler says emphatically. “I tried Restylane for the first time with her last June, and [after] one treatment with her I could see the difference.” Though she already had a perfectly fine dermatologist, she couldn’t resist trading up after seeing Wexler’s work on celeb faces. “I went to her after I saw her do Jill,” she admits.

Still, not every designer doc is a dream come true. One patient knew her bill of rights and dumped her designer doc before undergoing crucial hip surgery. Friends of Hattie Batson, a 75-year-old former dancer in Hell’s Kitchen, gushed when they heard she was seeing Edwin Su, an orthopedic surgeon at the swanky Hospital for Special Surgery, last year. They thought she hit the jackpot with Su, who rubs tennis elbows with the A-list.

It was enough to delight her friends — “well-placed individuals who commended me on my ‘good judgment,’ ” Batson says with a wink.

“I thought I’d get special celebrity treatment.”

But with a one-month wait just to get her first appointment, then another three months until Su had an opening for surgery, Batson had a little time to investigate. A little homework proved he was the wrong man, in her view, for this particular job. (Su wanted to perform a metal-on-metal technique, which Batson was strongly against.) So she dumped her designer doc for a low-key surgeon who shares her medical philosophy, performing the successful noninvasive surgery without cutting the muscle on a now up-and-running (and dancing) Batson.

“It just goes to show you that ‘reputation’ means bubkes unless you really do your homework,” she says. She’s never once bristled about schlepping to Westchester — instead of Park Avenue — to see her new doc, Corey Burak.

“There are no fancy cars waiting outside, no attitude inside, but I feel like a million bucks now,” she says. “And that’s all that matters.”