Miami Living Magazine

Matthew McConaughey

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WELLNESS 474 MIAMI LIVING In this conversation with Miami Living, the founders discuss patient advocacy, the responsibilities families carry, and why a health goal should begin with the life someone wants to lead. Miami Living (ML): What did caring for your own family reveal about the healthcare system? Dr. Vikas Goswamy: I watched my father become a case number. Good physicians, every one of them. But he had more specialists than anyone could track, and none of them were talking to each other. We are physicians, and we still felt locked out of his care. Dr. Priyanka Chopra: We had every advantage. We knew the specialists personally. We could call department chiefs and hospital executives in New York and Miami, and they picked up. It was still exhausting. If it is this hard for us, what is it like for everyone else? ML: Why name the practice after your son? Dr. Chopra: Nivaan is our son. I had a medically complex pregnancy, and his first year brought more appointments, more specialists, and more waiting rooms than any new parent expects. I sat in those rooms as a mother, not a physician, wishing someone would take my hand and say, "I have this." His name on the door is a promise. We fight for every member the way we fought for him. ML: What does advocacy look like in your day-to- day work? Dr. Chopra: Advocacy first. Navigation second. We are in the room asking the questions you did not know to ask, and we coordinate every scan, specialist, and result. A dear friend and member lives between New York and Miami. Within two weeks of a first symptom, there was imaging, a biopsy, a diagnosis, and treatment underway at Memorial Sloan Kettering. We handled every step across both cities. The family's only job was to be a family. ML: You set a limit of 100 members per physician. What does that allow you to do? Dr. Chopra: Our cap is 100 members per physician. Not one more. Many physicians care for 2,000 patients or more. At 2,000, your physician knows your chart. At 100, I know how you live: your history, your family, the way you describe pain. I have been in your home. I never need a chart to remember who you are. ML: Why bring medicine into the home? Dr. Chopra: Home tells you what a clinic never will: how you sleep, who cooks, what is in the medicine cabinet, how many stairs you climb. You cannot practice whole-person medicine from behind a desk. For members in their forties and fifties running companies and families, it gives back hours. No commute, no waiting room. We come to you, on your schedule. Dr. Goswamy: And when someone needs more, we bring a network of vetted resources: nurses, physical therapists, mental health therapists. After a stroke or surgery, that can mean 3 to 12 hours a day of therapy and nursing, so you recover in your own bed. ML: What happens when a member calls in the middle of the night? Dr. Chopra: Call us at 2 a.m. and you reach your physician. No nurse line. No assistant. No one in between. The person who picks up already knows you and has usually sat at your kitchen table. ML: How does your emergency medicine background inform the practice, Dr. Goswamy? Dr. Goswamy: Medicine has two speeds. Most practices are built for the slow one. Families remember

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