Growing up in New Delhi, India "the only thing my parents wanted from me and my brother were accolades in education," recalled Atul Madan, MD, MBA. His attention to educational excellence and detail helped him garner a spot at the highly competitive medical school in India, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).
Madan completed his internal medicine residency at AIIMS before coming to the U.S., where he repeated his internal medicine, chief residency and cardiology training at the State University of New York (SUNY)-Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY. Finally, he completed his interventional cardiology training at Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass. "At Brigham, I was fortunate to work with the pioneers in the field of cardiology, like Dr. Eugene Braunwald and late Dr. Donald Baim."
"I was always passionate to go to business school," said Madan, who went on to get his Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Troy State University while working in the Florida Panhandle.
Enter Sunil M. Kakkar, MD, trained at the Texas Heart Institute and fellow AIIMS alum, who founded Cardiac Clinic in 1981. "Dr. Kakkar recruited me to Orlando in 2005 and since then our practice has grown, adding three more cardiologists to the group," recalled Madan. His wife, Alka Arora, MD, is a staff oncologist with the UF Health Cancer Center - Orlando Health. Their daughter, Vrinda, is a high school senior, and their son, Varun, a seventh grader.
In addition to his family, Madan is proud of his partners at Cardiac Clinic, who have worked hard to make it one of the area's most valuable practices. The greatest quality, he counts, is the cohesiveness of the practice. "The consistent high-quality patient care is our biggest asset," he said. "We have never looked at numbers or statistics. We always believe in the highest patient satisfaction."
After moving to Orlando, Madan has been active in the local Indian community. Since 2012, he has been an executive member of the Central Florida Association of Physicians from the Indian Subcontinent (CAPI). In 2015, he was treasurer of the 33rd annual American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin's (AAPI) national convention, held in Orlando. In 2016, he has served as the president of CAPI.
During his five years as an office bearer, he has worked hard to revamp the organization and give back to the community. In addition, he has made remarkable progress in his ambitious "President's to-do list for the year 2016." (Please see The CAPI Conversation article in this edition.)
