A Family Physician Brings His Patients’ Perspectives from Bedside to Boardroom

Dr. Srinivas Bramhadevi is a board-certified Family Medicine physician with Wellstar Medical Group at West Georgia as their Primary Care Regional Lead. Wellstar Health System, one of the largest integrated health care systems in Georgia. A graduate of Osmania Medical College in Hyderabad, India, Bramhadevi completed his residency at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center at Shreveport. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians, a designated civil surgeon of the Department of Homeland Security and a former associate clinical professor of family medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Following his residency, Bramhadevi became interested in how to take the perspectives of his patients “from the bedside to the boardroom.” He observed a divide between the needs of his patients and the realities of the business of health care. 

“It was challenging for me to relate with the business side of medicine,” says Dr. Bramhadevi. “Physicians are projected as leaders, but the reality is that our ability to provide the best care for our patients is influenced by financial contracts, insurance rules and other business-related factors.”

Dr. Bramhadevi did not have the opportunity to learn about the business of medicine when he was a student in medical school. In 2013, he completed a physician executive MBA program at Auburn University. After graduating, he was offered a new position as medical director for primary care at his hospital. This position was created so Dr. Bramhadevi could get a seat in the boardroom and be part of a clinical integration network. This partnership allows hospitals and physicians to collaborate on quality and efficiency improvement. Dr. Bramhadevi continued his physician leadership journey by becoming a certified physician executive from American Association for Physician Leadership in 2018.

In 2017, the West Georgia Health system was acquired by Wellstar Health system, a change that helped the small rural hospital he worked for benefit from the resources of an extensive health system. As a physician in a leadership role centered on quality, Dr. Bramhadevi remained steadfast in his focus on professional development.

This eventually brought him to Harvard Medical School as a participant in the yearlong Safety, Quality, Informatics and Leadership (SQIL) postgraduate medical education certificate program. As a participant in the program, he benefited from the global perspectives of the faculty and fellow participants from around the world. “The program takes a very practical approach, and the faculty are phenomenal,” reflects Dr. Bramhadevi.

For his capstone, Dr. Bramhadevi looked at “improving patient access to primary care via telehealth in the after-hours.” His project focused on the patient experience and used NRC Health data to generate new insights. In due course, he presented the insights gained to the senior leadership of the virtual health department back at his health system, and they were able to optimize their patient experience through new approaches to data collection.

As Dr. Bramhadevi continues to grow his career and take on new leadership responsibilities, he is applying the knowledge acquired from the SQIL program to keep patients safe, deliver greater levels of quality and use informatics to guide his leadership and decision-making. 

He now sees the bedside and the boardroom as having a reciprocal relationship. Perspectives from the bedside inform boardroom decisions and vice versa. “Physician leadership is a two-way street,” Dr. Bramhadevi says. 

“Adaptive leadership is one of the key traits I took from the program. Rather than taking an authoritative approach to decision making, it’s about slowing down and understanding complex situations from multiple perspectives.”

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