We Need to Cultivate Relations Beyond Medicine

We Need To Cultivate Relations Beyond Medicine

President Obama and Dr VK Shah

Though his tenure as President of the American Association of Physicians of Indian origin (AAPI) comes to an end, Dr Vinod K Shah has plenty lined up to contribute to the organization, the community as well as the nations of his birth and adoption, India and the US, respectively.

Dr. VK Shah addressing the convention

A man of clear vision and motivated with the noble intent of touching and healing people’s lives – Dr. Shah’s life and mission are an example for thousands of doctors who take the Hippocratic Oath each year.

Bottom Row: Avni Shah, MD; Geeta Nayar, MD; Manish Shah; Parag Shah; Adarsh Gupta; Vipul Shah; Prakruti Shah; Parul Jani, MD; Bhargesh Mehta, MD; Chirag Parghi, MD

2nd Row: Suresh Patel, MD; Kiran Mehta , MD; Sharmila Mehta; Kiren Mathur; Krishan Mathur, MD; Ila Shah, MD; Neelam Shah; Vinod Shah, MD;
Nayan Shah MD; Jayu Shah; Dhiren Shah, MD; Avani Shah, MD; Umed Shah, MD; Shakuntala Shah; Suresh K. Gupta, MD
3rd Row: Samish Shah; Nila Patel; Kirit Patel, MD; Sushila Shah; Tarun Mehta; Sanjib Mishra, MD; Rahul Jindal, MD; Shambhu Banik, MD; Suresh C.
Gupta, MD; Pankaj Lal, MD; Rakesh Sahni, MD; Raj Samtani, MD; Pushma Samtani, MD; Bhasker Jhaveri, MD; Rita Jhaveri, MD; Beena Shah, MD;
Anil Shah, MD; Arpana Shah, MD; Amish Shah , MD; Dhara Desai; Minal Shah, MD; Madhu Mohan, MD; Mahesh Chandra, MD; Anantha Rao, MD
4th Row: Kishor Shah; Amit Sheth, MD; Milan Sheth; Sheriar Demehri, MD; Anil Kankaria, MD; Sushil Jain, OD; Genny Demehri; Asha Jain; Pradeep
Simlote, MD; Anu Simlote; Parvathi Mohan, MD; Madan Mohan, MD; Smita Patel, MD; Atul Shah, MD; Aruna Shah; Mukesh Mathur, MD; Nelson
Benjers, MD; Naresh Patel, MD; Adinath Patil, MD; Sukatu Shah; Aruna Patil, MD; Raj Patel; Shalin Shah; Vidya Sagar, MD; Megha Sagar; Savera
Sehgal; M.F.O. Lafeer, MD; Ajay Sehgal; Devendra Desai

On the occasion of completion of his one eventful year of fulfilled promises, Dr. Shah spoke with NRI Today and shared his views on milestones achieved.

"I had specific targets lined up to achieve during the year. The first was to make sure that we made enough funding available for

increasing the Residency slots for Medical students and communicate the need to the concerned authorities clearly," he says. Dr. Shah. In order to make that possible, he met President Barack Obama personally before the end of the first three months of his tenure and submitted him the document requesting increase in funding for the same. Increasing the participation of young physicians in AAPI was the second major agenda on hand. Hence he had a series of leadership seminars conducted throughout the years and recruited new AAPI members, doctors who were born and brought up in the US, the next generation of torchbearers who would take the mission and activities of AAPI forward. In this process he also got senior AAPI members involved at personal level to introduce and recruit the new members.

Dr Vinod Shah, Dr Illa Shah Dr Amish Shah standing in right Dr Arpana Shah, Dr Meena Shah and Dr Nick Khatri along with Sameer and Neelam

Third on his list was the idea of organizing a "robust convention" with maximum participation. "We gave incentive for early registration along with industry partnership program. And I am proud to say that first time in 28 years, we received full registration four months prior to the convention.  More than 2000 members have already registered, which has never happened before," Dr. Shah says.

Next, the team under Dr.Vinod Shah’s leadership developed a theme for each day of the convention. So on June 23, the first day, they have a cruise along the Potomac river to promote the theme of "Friendship and Camaraderie" among its members. "We decided to have a ‘Unity in Diversity’ as the theme for day two. In India people live in harmony despite the diverse cultural backgrounds and our members are representatives of the same diversity. Hence to celebrate the same sentiment we will have cultural programs which will bring the best of all the states," says Dr Shah.

Ba and Dadaji

Day three of the convention is devoted to public private partnership events that will have leading personalities and White House Representatives speak.

"We have also invited the President but for security reasons we wouldn’t know until last few days if he will grace the occasion. We will take 550 doctors to the US capitol to have a dialogue and reception with the Senators and Congressmen," he says. These are just some of the firsts, which have and will take place in the history of AAPI.

Brothers, Sisters , Sister-inlaws and Brother-inlaws

During the year, Dr.Shah personally visited a list of pharmaceutical companies and initiated a dialogue to explore ways in which doctors, institutions and pharma companies could work together for the betterment of the community at large.

Life will continue to remain increasingly active for Dr.Vinod Shah even after the completion of his tenure. When asked how he plans to remain involved in the initiatives undertaken as AAPI president, he says, "The incoming President Dr.Ajit Singhvi and I have worked closely together. I had also organized a global health care summit in New Delhi where people from as far s Dubai, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US had participated and the entire program was drafted by Dr.Singhvi. I will now be working with him on following the same line of thought process of increasing participation of young doctors. We are likely to add 2000 new members this year and plan to have another 1000 in the next year. We want to have a unified body by bringing the young doctors under the same umbrella."

Philip J. Bean Center

Mumbai office

Chartable Activity in Medical College

Earthquake Relief Work

View more Photos in PhotoGallery

The passage of the Health Care Reform Bill has given a boost to the health care sector and Dr.Shah believes most should be made out of the Accountable Care Organization provision where a group of physicians either come together as individual practice association or a large multispeciality group and find a relationship with a large hospital for a unique area. "It is a very strong provision for people to work together," he says. Secondly Dr.Shah wants more work to happen in the area of Malpractice Reform. "Currently the laws are set by individual states but not centrally. In USA litigation is common. That is one of the nightmares that all physicians face in a country where it is very easy to sue. The second problem is escalating costs – the cost of doing business is going up – and that includes malpractice insurance, health insurance, the benefits we give to our staff, salary and wages. So you have escalating cost and declining reimbursement, which is a double jeopardy. Also, the average doctor comes out with $130,000 – $150,000 debt that they have to pay off. So a lot of these factors can lead to people losing the passion that is so necessary to practice medicine.

Surgery in Rural Village

I honestly do not think that people go into medicine just for money. With the rigor of training, the amount of money that goes into education and practicing, there is a greater passion that is there. Due to the current system in the U.S., more and more physicians are retiring and telling their children not to go into medicine. This needs to be addressed effectively. Because if you take the incentive away of being a doctor, in the end it’s the people who are in need of care that ultimately suffer."

However, Dr.Shah believes that the US has the best health care system in the world. "Being doctors of Indian origin we have a very critical role to play between the two governments of India and America. Currently both the countries have best relationship in the last 30 years. I was fortunate to be at the First State Dinner, which significantly was in honor of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and even President Obama is likely to visit India later in the year. It will further strengthen the ties. We as doctors are in a position to play goodwill ambassadors with our dedicated services and relationships, which we build with average Americans as well as the legislators. We need to cultivate relations beyond medicine."

And that’s the principle Dr.Vinod Shah  and his wife Dr.Ila have lived by all along. This Maryland-based doctor couple has several firsts to their credit. At a time when no one was willing to move to the rural American county of St.Mary’s they decided to start a medical practice there. Despite being just 50 miles south of Washington DC the community was in acute shortage of medical specialists with not even a pediatrician to name. So the Shahs decided to work at St.Mary’s Hospital, where Richard Martin, head of the hospital at that time, described them as "answer to his prayers."

Feeling at home in Southern Maryland, Shahs along with brother Dr.Umed K Shah, a gastroenterologist initiated a group practice in 1974. Members from their extended family apart from friends joined in years to come and today the two generations of Shahs serve several generations of Southern Maryland families that account for a majority of the county’s 1,10,000 residents.

Of course the going wasn’t easy. The Shahs faced a lot of prejudice from the community initially and local doctors were hesitant to join them. With dedicated medical care and efficient management they could win over both. In mid-90s they consolidated much of their practice in a 60,000 square feet facility and named it Philip J Bean Medical Centre after a country doctor who practiced in the county for 66 years. "During those days there was a lot of discussion about gatekeeper concept where a primary care physician would direct a patient to specialist who would further decide what diagnostic care the patient needed. We thought it would be a good idea for us to develop a center of excellence instead where all kinds of specialties and facilities would be available under one-roof," says Dr.Vinod Shah. The concept proved successful and at present 90 doctors from 21 specialties work under the umbrella of Shah Associates across 14 locations.

In order to provide comprehensive clinic services the Shahs also set up a BPO in Mumbai where all the billing and recordkeeping is done electronically overnight. "President Obama wants to encourage use of electronic patient record by 2011 but we did it six years ago. Even though we are in a smaller area, we implemented electronic health records. When people were not even considering it, we invested a lot of money in order to have a connection to each office and electronic access to each patient’s record even from home. We are a very forward-thinking group and focus on identifying what’s going to make a real difference."

The Shahs are keen on focusing on disease management protocol where the doctors take advance care of patients. "In a traditional system you approach a doctor if you fall sick but in advance care doctors will focus on preventive health care," says Dr.Shah.

Born in Ranpur near Surendranagar and raised in Mumbai, Dr.Vinod Shah, a cardiologist, met Dr. Ila, a pediatrician at Seth GS Medical College in Mumbai. The couple came to US in 1967 to pursue further studies. When he came down, his immediate plan was to return to his home country after all of five years. But upon completing prestigious fellowships in internal medicine and cardiology at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., Dr. Shah had a choice: either return to India or use the resources he had gathered over the years since his arrival to do something truly revolutionary in the U.S. Dr. Shah chose the latter.

Dr.Shah has been a member of AAPI from the inception. "When Dr. Kiran Patel was president, he had asked me to chair a legislative conference and it was one of the best legislative conferences put together by the group. We had 51 congressmen and senators and among our speakers were Senator

Biden, Bobby Jindal and Congressman Steny Hoyer. The conference really showed the ability for us to excite people and invite them to come and be a part of what we were organizing. There was a crowd of about 250 people, and the idea was for us to really show our involvement in the health care dialogue moving forward. Because of that effort we got a $500,000 grant from the U.S. government to study diabetes amongst Indians, which was yet another landmark."

So, what’s the best part about being a doctor, we ask before he signs off, "The best part is I think I’ve made a difference in the lives of many, many people. It’s the most rewarding field. When you care for people and you come through for them, and they tell you "You know doc, you saved my life," it’s an indescribable feeling. That is what is motivating us to be hardworking doctors. I am very fortunate with the grace of God that I’ve never faced litigation in my 30+ years of practice. That is the nightmare, if you do honest and hard work and someone questions your integrity. But the joy of medicine is so much more that everything else is not important."

Dr Shah lives in Mechanicsville, Maryland with wife Dr.Ila. His son, Dr.Amish is a cardiologist, daughter-in-law Arpana is a dermatologist. They have two children, Samir and Neelam. Dr.Shah’s daughter Meena is a cardiologist fellow at Georgetown and son-in-law Nimesh will be gastroenterologist fellow at Georgetown. All his brothers, brothers-in-law and sisters-inlaw are doctors and live in Southern Maryland. Their group now has 102 physicians and network of additional 350 doctors.

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Courtesy of the Baynet.com