Anoop Raman, M.D., MBA | 2024 Emerging Leaders in Healthcare

Anoop Raman, M.D., MBA

I was born in Queens, New York, and our family eventually made our way to suburban New Jersey. I went to Brown University, majored in economics, and spent a short time working at Lehman Brothers as an equities research analyst. I learned a powerful skill set on valuations and modeling and that Wall Street (unsurprisingly) did not fulfill my need to serve and make an impact. I decided to pursue an M.D. and MBA at Tufts University. After a few years, I had the opportunity to take a leave of absence from med school and work with my healthcare hero, Paul Farmer, M.D., at Partners In Health in Rwanda. There, I was able to combine my clinical and financial skill set and work with our teams to scale the work we were doing in four health centers to nearly 40 and help build the first-ever rural cancer center in East Africa. I returned to medical school and realized that I could never work in fee-for-service medicine — that my passion lay with improving the health of populations through value-based care. Now, at AbsoluteCare, caring for the most bio-psycho-socially complex members of the communities we serve, I am able to marry my penchant for business and passion for medicine.

Please describe a turning point in your career — an event, a eureka moment, an encounter or a salient piece of advice from someone.

Reading “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” a book about Paul Farmer, opened my eyes to the depths of global health inequity and the ability of a small group of people to change the system. In the span of five years, from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, Partners In Health, thanks to the work of Paul Farmer and Jim Yong Kim, M.D., Ph.D., was able to change the public health paradigm on HIV care from, “We shouldn’t deliver these medications to poor countries because these drugs are too expensive and poor people won’t adhere to this daily regimen,” to the World Health Organization’s 3 by 5 initiative (3 million people on antiretrovirals by the year 2005) and the passage of PEPFAR (U.S. President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief), the world’s largest, most effective and sustained global health program ever.

Reading about and then joining in this work at Partners In Health has shown me that big things are possible, and the antidote to despair is commitment and sustained action.

What are your top two priorities as a leader in your organization and healthcare?

First, moving our health system toward value where clinicians are rewarded for better patient outcome. Second, restoring joy in practice for clinicians and patients, where providers enjoy their craft and patients feel that they are being treated as humans by people whom they know and whom they trust to care for them.

If you could change one thing about U.S. healthcare, what would it be?

The introduction of the computer into the exam room has deeply affected how the patients and providers connect to the detriment of human connection. I’m hopeful with the integration of new AI and language-learning models that technology will finally serve to help inform and connect providers and patients to see and hear each other once again, restoring humanity in healthcare.

Name a book or article that everyone working in healthcare should read.

“The Hot Spotters,” an article in The New Yorker, by Atul Gawande was an article in The New Yorker that changed my life. It shows the power of focusing and addressing the needs of the highest-cost and highest-needs individuals. Too often, our health systems write off the sickest members of our populations as not impactable. What the article taught me and what my work at AbsoluteCare has shown me in real life is how transformative it can be when we match the intensity of care for our patients with the intensity of their need, not just in the hospital but in their community.

How do you strike the right work-life balance?

I wish I knew the answer to this question (about striking the right work-life balance). I think that life is full of seasons. Seasons to sprint and push hard at work, and seasons to recharge and be present for friends and family.

If you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would it be and why?

I would love to have dinner with Paul Farmer. He was my mentor, colleague and inspiration. The world lost him way too soon. It would be a chance to reconnect, to talk about the work I do with AbsoluteCare in cities across America and how I see it as part of his greater legacy, but most of all to say thank you again.