The top priority for Dipen Parekh, MD, in his new role as CEO of the University of Miami Health System is to uphold the golden rule of medicine: do no harm.
As a practicing urologic oncologist and director of the Desai Sethi Urology Institute, the focus is not new to Dr. Parekh — or to UHealth.
“We have been on a great upward trajectory in terms of everything that should be relevant in healthcare,” he told Becker’s. “It starts with the patient and ends with the patient.”
Improving patient safety, quality and satisfaction, along with provider productivity, is the health system’s greatest collective accomplishment — not just that of any individual leader, he said.
“We are curiosity-driven,” Dr. Parekh said. “We want to set the highest standards across all the missions of healthcare in terms of clinical care, education and innovation. We will work with high intensity to overreach those standards.”
Dr. Parekh was named CEO on June 2 after having served as COO since 2020. Joseph Echevarria, who has served as president and CEO, will continue in his role as president. Dr. Parekh said the system’s upward trajectory in patient care was established under Mr. Echevarria’s leadership.
“The value of great alignment and partnership between the two of us combined with the talent and dedication of our entire workforce has led to these outcomes,” he said. “We will continue on that path.”
One of Dr. Parekh’s top priorities is improving access to care — a challenge across the U.S., but especially at UHealth, as the only academic health system in its tri-county region. To address this, UHealth has adopted a hub-and-spoke model, enabling it to expand care closer to patients.
“A lot of our present and future expansion is along satellite locations across these counties where patients don’t have to drive all the way in discomfort, and they can receive very advanced care near where they live,” he said.
The system is also scaling its use of artificial intelligence. It is currently used across three main verticals: patient outcomes, efficiencies (such as implementation of ambient dictation for clinicians) and access (including call center optimization).
Dr. Parekh joined UHealth in 2012 as chair of the department of urology. He led the creation of the Desai Sethi Urology Institute, which has since become one of the top 15 NIH-funded programs in the nation. He later served as chief clinical officer from 2017 to 2020.
A practicing surgeon, he has performed more than 6,000 robotic surgeries for urologic cancers. His leadership path, he said, grew from a desire to become not only a world-class surgeon but also a scientist and leader in his field.
“I’m so proud that this is a physician-led, physician-driven health system,” he said. “That means a lot, because the primary goal of all physicians is the desire for the best outcomes for their patients.”
Financial outcomes, he added, are byproducts of high-quality clinical outcomes, not end goals. The right decision for patient care ultimately ends up being the right decision for an administrative function, he said.
“I continue to practice as an active surgeon,” Dr. Parekh said. “Someone from an under-accessed area in our community with urologic cancer can be treated by the CEO — that gives me a lot of joy and fulfillment.”
