I recently had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Vikram Shah of Shalby Hospitals at the IKS Healthcare conclave and I was very impressed. Dr. Vikram Shah is a pioneering orthopaedic surgeon who has performed a very large number of hip replacement surgeries.
He is a first generation entrepreneur - a doctor who started from scratch, and has now built up an orthopaedic empire which straddles the entire country. He is the kind of person who needs to be invited to start-up conferences to tell his story, but the problem is he's very shy and unassuming. He is not interested in grabbing the spotlight, unlike lots of other founders, because he's completely bootstrapped and has done this all by himself. He doesn't need to preen and posture in front of investors because he's not hungry for their money.
What's remarkable is that even though he's extremely profitable (and has been consistently so), his major focus has always been on providing excellent patient care. According to him, because he puts his patients first, the profits have automatically followed. This is such a pleasant contrast from health care ventures funded by VC money, where the entrepreneur and investor first decide how and where the money is going to be made, and then think about creating a business plan in order to get that money.
Because he now has a global reputation for being able to provide high quality class care consistently, frugally and cost effectively, patients flock to him from all over the world. He has been able to groom many young orthopaedic surgeons who are very happy to work under him because they admire his work ethic. He mentors them and they look up to him as a respected father figure, because he treats them with love and respect. This is a key ingredient of his success. He trains them well, because he has so much patient volume, and then provides them with enough clinical autonomy and freedom, so that they can do what they love - taking care of their patients in the Operation Theatre. They don't have to worry about administrative hassles, and have high self-esteem, because they can practise high quality medicine. They command professional prestige, because they have so much experience and clinical expertise. They are respected at Shalby, because it is a doctor-first hospital. Unlike other corporate hospitals, they don't have to worry that they will be bossed around by a freshly minted non-clinical MBA administrator, who doesn't understand what it means to put patients first.
He's growing organically, and now that his systems are in place, he will continue to do so. Because he's a focused factory and extremely profitable, he's going to find it much easier to raise investor money if he wants to grow even more rapidly. He's now in the enviable position where investors come to him and say, “Please take our money, because we want to help you to grow" because they want to share in his profits! Unlike most other founders, he doesn't have to pitch to investors, and this is a far better position for an entrepreneur to be in, because it allows him to remain honest to his mission and vision.
Because he is a clinician, he has a very good sense of what equipment to invest in. He will not waste money on frills which just add to the patient's cost, but don't improve clinical outcomes. As he says, a 1.5 tesla MRI machine is a workhorse for the orthopaedic surgeon, and answers 99% of the doctor's questions. There's no point in splurging on the newest “state of the art" 7 Tesla machines! These machines sound a lot more impressive to an ignorant patient, but are purely great advertising tools for the hospital. A non-clinical CEO, who doesn't understand medicine, is quite happy to buy the "newest and latest", because he doesn't know any better, and medical device manufacturers are always happy to sell the newest generation machines, even though they don't affect clinical outcomes. What they do affect is the cost to the patient, because 7-Tesla machines are so disproportionately expensive. Patients end up being burdened with an out sized bill, without reaping a proportionate benefit.
Because he's a doctor, he has lots of clinical common sense, and he doesn't get carried away by the latest toys or technology. It was very inspiring to hear his heart-warming story!