MIMIT Health CEO Aims to Change Healthcare with “Amazonification”
One thing you should know about me is that I love golf. So, I’d like to share a quote from one of the best to ever play: Tiger Woods. He said, “you can always get better.” I take this to mean that you shouldn’t settle for satisfaction; you should aim for greatness—to be the best you possibly can. And while I probably won’t become a U.S Open Champion like Tiger, I can certainly shoot to be the best physician and healthcare executive I can possibly be. This means treating a patient’s mind, body, and spirit so they can go home happier and healthier than when I first met them. This means giving my employees cutting-edge resources and technologies so they can perform their jobs to the best of their abilities. This also means changing the healthcare industry forever.
HELLO. MY NAME IS DR. PARAMJIT CHOPRA. SOME CALL ME A HEALTHCARE DISRUPTER, INFLUENCER, AND INNOVATOR, BUT MY FRIENDS CALL ME “ROMI,” SO YOU MAY CALL ME THAT.
Originally, I come from Mumbai, India, which inhabits over 20 million people. If you don’t know what life is like in India, understand that it can be hard at times. However, it is filled with extremely hard-working people who are well-equipped to overcome this hardship. I witnessed my parents, who woke up early every day to take the overcrowded public transportation, work 12-hour days, six days a week to provide for me and my family. When my time came to work as a teenager, I experienced the same adversity they did. However, because my parents instilled their relentless work ethic in me from a young age, I was diligent in everything I did. Another thing to know about India is that the work culture is extremely competitive because there are so many people. If you don’t perform, then you are easily replaceable by the countless others looking to take your job. You fear getting fired for making a mistake—any mistake. In fact, I often remember the stress this caused my parents. It was these experiences, however, that made me who I am today, so I am extremely proud and humbled to be Indian and have grown up in Mumbai.
Fast-forward to 1989. It was then that I made the move to Boston to attend Harvard Medical School, which was my first experience in the United States. I was in a foreign place unlike anything I’ve experienced before, but I brought my culture, including that work ethic, with me because that was a part of my identity. Just as Tiger Woods wouldn’t have been a 15-time major champion without practice, lessons, and dedication, I wouldn’t have become the physician and entrepreneur I am today without my work ethic. It led me to a fellowship with Brigham and Women’s Hospital as well as the many positions I’ve had over the years.
I’ve been Chairman of the Department of Interventional Radiology at Rush University Medical Center, an associate professor, and have had leadership positions in large academic and private hospitals. As an entrepreneur, I’ve started and managed several healthcare businesses as a consultant and been an advisor to several large medical device and pharmaceutical companies. And through all these positions, I’ve never forgotten the most important element of healthcare: the patient. The patient is always at the forefront of everything I do and everything I will do in the future. In fact, I left those bureaucratic positions at academic and private hospitals because financials became more important than the patient. I often heard, “The surgery was a success, but the patient died.” This didn’t align with my values, so I began to think about how to establish a patient-centered culture all while prioritizing company growth. This led me to my next adventure: MIMIT Health.
I’m the Founder, President, and CEO of MIMIT Health, one of the fastest-growing, independent, multi-specialty physician groups in Illinois. We provide world-class healthcare by using minimally invasive treatments and implementing healthy lifestyle strategies to heal a patient’s mind, body, and spirit. This is my vision in action—a way to truly focus on patient centricity. Therefore, I disagree when someone says I’m in the business of healthcare; I'm in the business of taking care of people first and foremost. I don't care if you want to talk about care models as B2B or B2C because it's all H2H, human-to-human, as far as I'm concerned. When you're ill, you don't go to a building; you want to go to another person.
Providing world-class care means nothing, however, if your organization lacks streamlined processes. And this is exactly the situation MIMIT Health was in at the very beginning as data entry, organization, and communication were ineffective. This led me to think about solutions. I knew that I had to start thinking like a business entrepreneur rather than a medical doctor. Surely there had to be a better way of handling data or a way to handle data entry even less. My quest to find a better way led me to explore different health IT solutions until, eventually, I found Health Cloud.
Health Cloud allows our physicians to streamline communication and data to provide valuable insights. It allows us to interact with patients and their caregivers in new ways, which produces a better patient care experience and better outcomes as well. For example, we can track patient preferences, such as how they want to be contacted. We also add everyone involved in a patient’s care plan to the system to streamline communication. Utilizing these high-tech systems not only benefits the patient but our practice, too, and it’s one of the reasons why we’re growing so quickly. However, it’s not enough to simply have the right technology; you must have the proper processes in place that can support this technology. This is what led me to create the Amazonification of healthcare.
Chances are you are familiar with the company Amazon. Apart from delivering your orders in two days and reshaping the e-commerce industry, their unique approach to customer service is transforming every industry. They know that it’s no longer just about the product; it’s about the customer experience, or in our case, the patient experience. Amazonification uses affection, relevance, and trust—scientifically proven drivers of friendship—to establish deeper relationships with customers. Customers then become more loyal and position themselves as champions of the brand because they feel listened to, and they identify with the company story and style. Like Amazon, MIMIT Health provides this kind of patient experience. I constantly receive emails from patients about how caring and supportive our physicians are, which shows me that Amazonification is working.
Another key component of Amazonification is the ability to be connected, mobile, and collaborative with patients. Patients are no longer blindly accepting what providers tell them; they want to take control of their health and establish a more connected relationship with their providers. As a result, patients are happy knowing they are included in their own care plan, and they return in the future because of that relationship you built. To create this relationship, physicians must identify patient needs, meet current patient needs, and constantly uncover evolving needs. Once identified, physicians can match those needs to treatment decisions, some of which include the use of artificial intelligence. At MIMIT Health, our physicians are always collaborating with patients. We ask them how they feel, if they’re comfortable with procedures, and ensure that their values align with our treatment.
There isn’t any reward without a little risk, though. We understand this at my company, so we are always open to adopting new, cutting-edge technology, like Health Cloud. We have a unique position in that we aren’t afraid to commit to a vision and aren’t afraid to keep changing strategies to accommodate for changing audiences, all without losing our authentic mission: to treat a patient’s mind, body, and spirit so they can go home happier and healthier than when we first met them. We also use high-tech systems like Salesforce and artificial intelligence to collect and process a plethora of data that helps us to make the correct care decisions, thus improving the patient experience and increasing customer loyalty. At the same time, survival rates increase, pharmaceutical companies gain a detailed understanding of patient journeys, and providers can be more efficient, which drives down costs. When we have the right information, the right decision is made, and it becomes an actual insight we can use. A service so fundamental to human life as healthcare requires an innovative and thoughtful approach to drive change, and that’s what I strive to do every day.
Being a better listener also helps us advise patients and customers better. In this Amazonified industry, healthcare companies need to make a better effort to get to know their customers well enough to anticipate what kind of questions they’ll have. At MIMIT Health, we can look at those parameters and predict what could happen so that we can prevent it from happening. By being on the forefront of this movement, I hope to pave the way for other practices to follow suit. I jumped at the opportunity to incorporate Health Cloud because I knew that if I improved the patient experience, I also improved my business, creating a symbiotic relationship.
Amazon does everything better, faster, and cheaper in retail, and we at MIMIT Health want to do the same for healthcare. Just as Amazon has the compelling story of going from operating out of Jeff Bezos’ garage to the behemoth that has made him the richest man on Earth, MIMIT Health’s origin was grounded in helping heal the mind, body, and spirit in the most cost-effective way possible. We aim to provide the highest quality care while utilizing the least number of resources to produce the greatest impact, all while limiting costs for the patient. In that way, we are continuing to create a centralized story and style that can be associated with MIMIT Health, which keeps us relevant.
Today, I look back on my days in India, not with disdain because of the hardship, but with profound happiness because of that hardship. I am so fortunate to have learned the value of hard work and appreciation for others during my childhood, which has translated into the success that MIMIT Health is today. Those qualities are still very much a part of me today, and I would not be the man I am today without those experiences. I am thankful for my family, friends, employees, and patients for pushing me to be the best version of myself. And while I may not raise the U.S Open golf trophy in triumph, I smile knowing that I prioritize the patient in everything I do and that I’m on my way to changing the healthcare industry through Amazonification.
To your health.
Sincerely,
Romi Chopra