- July 3, 2024
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What started as Neha Doshi’s father’s dream has now turned into her own.
From a very young age, Doshi remembers her father telling her he wanted to be a doctor.
“I think he got into medical school, and the first few weeks they started doing dissections he realized he couldn't do it,” she says. “Then, he ended up becoming an engineer. I think part of him still wished he had gone into medicine, because there is a certain fulfillment that comes from helping people. It’s very cliche, but it’s very true. It’s something you get to experience every day. I always remember him telling me that I should be a doctor when I was young. I started volunteering when I was only in middle school. So, I guess I became a doctor because it was my dad’s dream, but it seemed like a really wonderful thing to do.”
Years later, Baldwin Park resident Doshi now owns Winter Park Concierge Care, a private concierge primary care practice located on Lake Baldwin Lane.
CREATING A MEDICAL HOME
Doshi’s parents immigrated to the United States from India in the late 1960s.
Doshi grew up in New Jersey and majored in biological sciences at Rutgers College. She completed a seven-year joint medical program with Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and did her internal medicine residency training at St Peter’s Medical Center.
Doshi married her husband, Sunit Sanghrajka, and the couple moved to Stuart, Florida, where she worked her first job at a hospital for about 10 years.
“It was very nice,” she says. “I got to do what I love, and they handled running the practice.”
The couple then made the move to Orlando, because they wanted to be in a more cosmopolitan area with their two young children: Maya, now 21, and Nikhil, now 19.
She remembers when her children were younger she would tell them stories about the patient of the day to help inspire them.
Doshi then started working for AdventHealth, which was Florida Hospital at the time.
“Medicine was changing at that point,” she says. “It was no longer ‘You do what you love and we'll run the practice.’ Now, it was much more of a business. There were a lot of practices being bought out by the hospital, and, like any other business, they wanted you to see lots of people so they could make a lot of money. It was just in and out. I could see that change. I went from spending half an hour with my patients in South Florida to now seeing patients in 20 minutes and then 15 minutes. I couldn't even personally call back people with results like I wanted to. Instead, the patients would get a call from a nurse or no call at all if everything was normal. It got to where I felt like I wasn’t practicing medicine the way I wanted to. I suppose maybe I would have stayed and kept doing it, but it got to where I felt like we had to keep cutting corners, and I wasn’t OK with that.”
After working for the hospital for about five years, Doshi decided she needed to reinvent herself.
However, she underestimated how hard it would be to make it on her own in primary care internal medicine.
“I realized to make ends meet I was actually going to need to see even more patients,” she says.
Her husband, who owns a safari company based in Winter Park, helped guide her using his experience in entrepreneurship. He suggested she explore concierge medicine
“I didn’t think people would pay that much money just to see me, but he convinced me,” she says.
Doshi opened her own practice in 2013.
“People came,” she says. “It was slow growing, but now I see the value in what I do. It’s been more than 10 years. I have just 300 patients, and I see a couple in the morning and a couple in the afternoon. Each one has about 45 to 60 minutes with me, and I take great care of them. I have a lot of families, and it’s exactly the way I wanted it to be. I’m really, really fortunate that I have this little bubble.”
TAKING CARE OF FAMILY
Winter Park Concierge Care’s mission is to provide the highest quality medical care, emphasizing a comprehensive approach to prevention and disease management. At any age, the practice believes in maximizing total wellness.
With only a few hundred patients, the practice is able to provide a unique level of care. The practice treats a broad range of medical challenges, including nutrition counseling, life coaching, stress management, and men and women’s health.
Doshi says the biggest difference between internal medicine and other specialties is the opportunity she gets to form life-long relationships with patients, which is what she loves the most about her work.
Concierge medicine allows for a wide range of benefits, such as providing more time and access for patients, after hour access to the doctor for unexpected needs, same and next day appointments, in-office blood work and expedited results, and assistance with referrals to like-minded local and out of town specialists.
“I get calls, texts and emails from my patients all day and all night,” Doshi says. “However, I’ve found that if you take care of people well in the day time and give them enough time and answer their questions, you don’t really get after hour emergencies. People rarely call me after hours.”
Initially, Doshi worried about only attracting wealthy individuals from Winter Park. Instead, she was pleasantly surprised with the wide range of patients who came to visit her, including some who followed her from AdventHealth.
Doshi sees everyone from small business owners to hair stylists, auto mechanics and more.
She says her ultimate goal was to create a medical home, with her team of professionals welcoming patients like family. Her entire staff is made up of women she has built close relationships with over the years.
Doshi’s focus is on primary prevention, and her interests include women’s care, diabetes management, heart disease and travel medicine.
With her husband’s safari company, she has had the opportunity to travel across the world, including visits to Africa, South America and India. She has brought home many relics from her travels to share with patients in her office.
Doshi realizes being a doctor, just like any other profession, needs to be something that makes her a living, but she feels fortunate she gets to do what she loves.
“I’ve always felt that if you do what you love in life then the money will follow,” she says. “I don’t make the amount of money that you would make if you work for a big hospital corporation, but there’s a price to be paid for that. I make a very comfortable living doing what I love every single day. My patients are like my family.”
GROWING WITH THE TIMES
Doshi believes in changing and growing with the times.
In December 2023, she started introducing aesthetics to her office using Emsculpt Neo, a non-surgical body contouring treatment that reduces fat and increases muscle. She also started a weight loss program.
Doshi says getting the new machine has helped push her into learning more about social media for advertising, despite it being outside her comfort zone.
She believes expanding into aesthetics will help her sustain the practice’s business model and even make money when she is not there at the office, so she can have more free time and do more traveling.
With her practice prospering, Doshi now has more time to do other things she loves, such as volunteering.
She volunteers at Grace Medical Home, which is a nonprofit clinic in downtown Orlando that offers high-quality care to those who are uninsured or have low-income in Orange County.
She also serves on the University of Central Florida’s STEM board, where she helps to host panel discussions for incoming students interested in science and medicine, and mentors a few students.
She has plans to soon start doing mission trips with AdventHealth.
“I get the opportunity and time to give back, which I would never have been able to do in my previous life,” she says. “I get that fulfillment.”
Doshi plans to practice medicine for at least 20 more years and hopes to continue to change and grow in her profession.
When not working or traveling, she enjoys camping, reading, gardening and spending time with her family.
For Doshi, practicing medicine is her world. She believes it will be very hard for her to one day retire.
“I love feeling needed,” she says. “Every day I wake up, and I know I have people who need me. Of course, there are aspects of it that are work, but with it comes so much gratitude. You also share in people’s pain. I always feel like it’s such a privilege to be a part of helping someone through that. I’m always excited, because I feel like my patients teach me too. When you teach, you learn. Every day is a little bit different.”
