Influential Woman · Healthcare

Dr. Amruta Ravan

Physician, MBA

Director of IME, PATEL KAO PAIN AND REHAB ASSOCIATES LLC

Houston, TX

Certifications · Degrees · Memberships

Degree Medical degree Degree Graduated 2009 Degree MBA from Rice University Degree 2024 Cert Physician Cert MBA

Her Story

About Dr. Amruta

I am a physician who has been in medicine for almost 15-16 years since graduating in 2009. After practicing medicine for 4 years, I spent 2 years doing research in Neurology before moving into my current field. I serve as the Director of Independent Medical Examination, a department I actually started 7 years ago in 2019. When we began, it was just one doctor and myself working on this side of the business. Today, we have grown tremendously to about 56 doctors who do IMEs with us and a dedicated team of about 60 people including medical assistants and report specialists. In 2022, I went to India and developed a back office for us so we could get reports scribed, and that team has now grown to 123 people working across two different cities. I also earned my MBA in 2024 from Rice University because I was more looking into the business side of it. Our company works with a group of physicians who do independent physical examinations and medical record reviews for workers' compensation and no-fault insurance. We review records, do physical examinations of patients, and generate reports. I currently supervise 3 different departments and am initiating automation efforts to modernize our systems, as this particular sector of the healthcare industry is not very progressive technologically. My MBA focused primarily on operations, and I am using a lot of that knowledge to help get our processes better and establish end-to-end workflows and software for our use. I start my day about 5 AM Central, meeting with IT teams and scribes in India to understand issues they're facing, then moving to the U.S. side. Because I was one of the few who started working when we started this company, I know almost A to Z that happens in my company.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Dr. Amruta

01What do you attribute your success to?

I have a very strong spiritual back, which is what I feel has held me through whenever I felt mentally weak. My spiritual mentor helped me a lot and was able to lift my spirit when I was not at my best. I also had incredible support from my boss, Sham Patel, who always had my back and gave me the authority and freedom to work in the field that I'm currently in. Knowing he was there for me, that he would take care of me if I goofed off somewhere, gave me the confidence to do a lot of things. Additionally, Dr. Sankla, one of my mentors from India when I was doing clinical research, instilled in me the drive to always want more. She made me more inquisitive and taught me that you cannot just be doing one thing, you need to be always wanting more in order for you to progress. That mindset has been crucial to my success.

02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?

The best advice I received was from Dr. Sankla, one of my mentors from India. She taught me that you cannot just be doing one thing, you need to be always wanting more in order for you to progress. She instilled in me this drive to be more inquisitive and to keep pushing for more. That mindset of never being satisfied with just one accomplishment and always striving for growth has been instrumental in my career development.

03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

If you really want to start in this field, you should know your basics. You need to know what is required, because this is the place where you need to learn to be very diplomatic when it comes to working on the workers' comp or no-fault insurance side as a provider. You need to know the basics, and you need to know what is that the industry requires, and what is that going to make you be able to survive. If you know at least these three things, I think you will survive and you will do fairly good. This is a very niche field, so understanding the fundamentals and what the industry demands is essential.

04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?

The biggest challenge and opportunity in my field right now is the lack of technological advancement. This particular sector of the healthcare industry, the workers' comp and no-fault sector, is very not progressive technologically. We still use paper-based records, not the fancy EMRs you see in hospitals. It's a struggle to get those records. We still use just Google Drive and Microsoft Word to store our records, and there's no automation. We do everything manually, from scheduling to uploading records to sending out records. Everything is done manually. Right now, I am initiating efforts to automate quite a few of our systems. We are working to establish end-to-end workflows and develop software for our use. This represents both the biggest challenge in terms of outdated systems and the biggest opportunity to modernize and improve efficiency in this sector.

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