(In this final edition of Movers and Shakers in Medicine we present a story with a difference. This is the story of a young dynamic physician raised in United States whose life is a very inspiring and interesting mix

of following Indian traditions, professional excellence and community contributions. Dr. Apurv Gupta has been a visionary in the field of health care management. He has also been a trail blazer following his passion to improve the quality of health care by co-founding the Physician Performance Institute that teaches health care providers the basics of this important subject in the context of their real project that they are working on. He is a teacher and a leader in the medical world. He has also followed cultural Indian traditions of an arranged marriage and raising his kids in a nurturing joint family in Rhode island where he lives with his parents.)

Dr. Apurv Gupta is adjunct senior lecturer for the Executive Master of Healthcare Leadership Program at Brown University, where he teaches courses on "Quality Improvement and the Healthcare Learning Organization" and "Management and Marketing to Transform Health Care." He is also managing partner of Physician Performance Improvement Institute, and a catalyst to a number of healthcare entrepreneurial ventures. He has held numerous leadership positions in the healthcare industry including Vice President for Network Performance Improvement at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Chief Medical Officer at Quincy Medical Center, Medical Director at Norwood Hospital, and Associate Medical Director at Beth Israel Deaconess Physicians Organization.

Dr. Gupta has significant experience with quality improvement, clinical process redesign, change management, cultural transformation, and physician engagement. His measurable successes include Transitions of Care, Diabetes, Venous Thrombo-Embolism Prophylaxis, Congestive Heart Failure, Stroke, Patient Flow, and Patient Satisfaction. He also has considerable expertise in conflict mediation, infrastructure building, team-building, and leadership development.

In 2011, Dr. Gupta received the Bharat Samman Award from the NRI Institute; in 2009, he received the American Medical Association Foundation Leadership award, as well as the Outstanding fifty Asian Americans in Business award from the Asian American Business Development Center. He is a trustee and past president of the Indian Medical Association of New England and serves on the board of directors of Friends of Shelter Associates. He completed a residency in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital/ Harvard Medical School. He has a Sc. B and MD from Brown University, and an MPH from Harvard University School of Public Health.

Apurva Gupta was born in Delhi, and moved to Liberia, West Africa with his family before coming to the United States in 1978.  When they came to the US, they lived in Queens, New York. “Living in Queens taught me that life does not always come easy.  I learned that it is not good to take life for granted but continue to work extremely hard and keep growing as a person,” says Gupta. His father, Ram Gupta is a professor of Civil Engineering at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. A very active member of the Indian community, Dr. Ram Gupta is the founder of the Hindi Association of Rhode Island and has been teaching Hindi for over fifteen years.   

Even though he moved to the US at a young age, he opted to have a traditional Indian arranged marriage. “I met my wife, Anupama, in New Delhi, in an arranged fashion. Our meeting was actually featured in a Boston Globe article. The first thing I noticed about her was her peaceful presence. I felt it would be very good balance for my energetic, passionate personality and help keep me grounded,” says Dr. Gupta. They were engaged within a month of meeting each other and married within a year. They have two children, a five year old son and a nine year old daughter. “We have an extended family setup in Barrington, RI, with my parents, wife, and kids all living together.  I have two sisters - one moved back to India three years ago to set up a technology company that’s doing very well; the other is in education. She got married two years ago, and recently moved to Washington, D.C.” says Gupta.

His medical journey started out in Rhode Island when he got admitted to the prestigious eight-year medical program at Brown University. However early on he had a strong interest in developing his career along management lines. “During a couple of summers, I traveled to India to undertake field studies in public health. These experiences led me to take a year off between 3rd and 4th years of medical school to pursue a masters in Public Health at Harvard, with a focus on health care management. This turned out to be a critical influence in my professional life. I decided then that I wanted to develop my career more along the management lines, but since I was so far along the clinical path, that it made sense to develop a strong clinical foundation for the same. I pursued Internal Medicine training as I thought it would give me the broadest understanding of medicine. I chose Beth Israel Hospital for my residency, as it was one of the few places that promised me that I could “string a number of electives together to learn more about health care management  - as opposed to the standard clinical electives in Cardiology or Gastroenterology. At Beth Israel, I pursued that management calling, and undertook a number of successful projects. This is where I first got introduced to  the ideas that could improvement care. These projects led my chief of medicine to recruit me for a newly developed role at Beth Israel Deaconess Physician Organization as Physician Adviser, which grew quickly into an Associate Medical Director for Disease Management. Here my role was to develop systems for improving care for populations of patients - for example, developing a chest pain protocol in order to improve diagnosis and management of all patients who had this symptom,” says Gupta. 

Early on he co-founded a company called MDplanet.com, to build tools for physicians to better access medical information online. “It was an intense, highly educational opportunity. We were successful at raising some funds from angel investors, and in developing partnerships with some top-tier companies, but ultimately, could not get a product released before the bottom fell out of the market in 2001,” says Gupta. 

His managerial interests motivated him to take the role of Medical Director at Norwood Hospital. “My primary responsibility was to build a great Hospitalist team, and through that to improve clinical systems throughout the hospital. It turned out to be a labor of love, as I built that team upon principles that were central to me - excellence, improvement and compassion. That hospitalist team remains one of my proudest accomplishments to date - getting a group of like-minded, dedicated, and passionate individuals” says Gupta.   

He later became the Chief Medical Officer at Quincy Medical Center. The hospital was in financial difficulty, and he was actively engaged in trying to turn it around.  â€œWe implemented a number of improvement initiatives, which worked very well. It was about building a system of improvement - tools, principles, culture - which ultimately made the undertaking more likely to be successful.” says Gupta. 

He has had other leadership roles, including Vice President, Network Performance Improvement for Blue Cross Blue Shield of MA. “As my experience with and passion for performance improvement has deepened over the years, I have decided to focus more of my energy on this arena. Performance improvement is a relatively straightforward endeavor, however, many of don’t tend to implement it with the discipline required for success. Physician Performance Improvement Institute, a company that I co-founded in 2009 with two partners based in Arizona, endeavors to teach physicians and other healthcare leaders the basics of performance improvement within the context of a real project that they are working on. In this setting, the learning is more vivid, and since we track measurable outcomes of the project, it becomes linked to documented results. We’ve concluded a couple of successful projects, and are embarking on another” says Gupta.

He has recently become part of the faculty for a new Executive Master of Healthcare Leadership Program at Brown University for which he will be teaching two courses - “Quality Improvement and the Healthcare Learning Organization” and “Management and Marketing for Transforming Health Care”.  

Where does he get his inspiration to be a transformational leader? “Gandhi’s “Be the Change You Wish to See in the World” powers my professional and personal views on improvement; improve yourself, and that will lead others to follow” says Gupta. “I also try to find inspiration in the day-to-day - my family, friends, colleagues, and the world at large - how they move forward, build their lives, make a difference, achieve something greater than themselves”.

He has been actively engaged in community service. He has served on the host committee of Akshaya Patra for several Annual Meetings. He has served as the President of the Indian Medical Association of New England. He currently serves as a board member.  He is also a board member of Friends of Shelter Associates, an organization that raises funds and awareness for building toilets in the slums of Pune, India.

When asked about role models he bunches them into two categories – people who he does not know and ones he knows personally. “Paul Farmer - Co-Founder of Partners in Health, Don Berwick - Former Administrator for CMS; Founder of Institute for Healthcare Improvement and Atul Gawande - Author, Surgeon, Researcher and people that I do not know personally but I really admire. Amongst people I know I really look up to Dr. Sanjiv Chopra, Dean of Continuing Medical Education at Harvard Medical Schools one of the best storytellers I’ve known - he leaves you completely enraptured,” says Gupta.

His favorite movies are “Life is Beautiful”, “Om Shanti Om” and "Schindler’s List". His favorite film stars are Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan. He loves Indian, Italian, Mexican and Middle Eastern food.

His has a lot of books that he likes. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, Leadership from the Soul by Deepak Chopra, Good to Great by Jim Collins, Drive by Daniel Pink and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. 

His favorite singers are Jagjit Singh and Pankaj Udhas. His favorite travel destinations are New Zealand, Costa Rica and Sedona.

His favorite quotes – 

“Be the Change” - Gandhi; 

“Knowing is not enough we must do” - Goethe 

 

Any message for our readers? 

“Perseverance and discipline makes the difference.

Try to achieve clarity about yourself, and the courage to be true to it.

Ask “How Might We” as a simple phrase to stimulate creativity.”