UH Ahuja Hospitalist a Guiding Presence for His Patients

UH Clinical Update | April 2025

UH Ahuja Medical Center hospitalist Deep Patel, DO, started out in medical school thinking he’d go into emergency medicine. But he says he found himself increasingly curious about how patients fared after they left the ED.

Deep Patel, DO

“You'd have this super-sick patient, and you're left wondering what happened,” he says. “And I didn't like that. I really like to come back and see what's going on. What did the initial workup show? How can we adjust our treatment plan? How is the patient responding? To that end, I wanted to continue seeing patients through that progression.”

Hospital medicine proved to be a perfect fit.

“What I really like about the hospitalist work is helping very sick people and seeing them through that course in a variety of illnesses,” Dr. Patel says. “We see, strokes, heart attacks, all sorts of infection and cancer and everything in between.”

Dr. Patel completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan and his medical degree at the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine. Residency training in internal medicine at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus soon followed. After practicing in Charlotte, North Carolina briefly, Dr. Patel says he was eager to return to the Midwest. He joined Summa Health System in Akron in 2020 and just recently left there to join UH in January 2024.

He says he credits Charles LoPresti, MD, SFHM, UH’s Chief of Hospital Medicine, with making a great case for joining UH.

In his short time at UH, Dr. Patel has made quite an impact. One grateful patient wrote this:

“Dr. Patel is the best hospitalist I've ever experienced. He was very knowledgeable, ordered definitive tests and explained the reasoning behind interpretation. He watched results carefully and watched my response to meds and treatment. He is attentive- he is happy to listen, learn and discuss care. He was there when I needed him. He is great at establishing trust and included me in shared decision-making. Most importantly, he was a great captain of the ship. He had a good medical team to work with but communicated with them and had them communicate between themselves.”

Another note received included these sentiments about Dr. Patel’s care: “I wanted to relay my family’s deep-felt gratitude for the care my mother received by Dr. Patel….Other than when she was in the ICU, her primary hospitalist was Dr. Patel. He always took the time to communicate assessments and plans to my mother as well as to my siblings. He connected with me every day of her hospitalization to discuss his thoughts about her care and to see if I had any questions. He sought us out when she was readmitted to the ICU to let us know that he would be re-assuming care after she was cleared by the ICU….He clearly partnered well with the nurse coordinator to make sure that my mother’s assisted living facility was prepared to receive her [upon discharge]. He spent 45 minutes reassuring my mother and siblings of same.”

In recognition of this stellar performance, UH CEO Cliff A. Megerian, MD, FACS, Jane and Henry Meyer Chief Executive Officer Distinguished Chair, recently named Dr. Patel a “Dinner with the Doc” honoree.

As he pivots each day from seeing patients, to talking with consultants, to answering family members’ questions, to reviewing test results, Dr. Patel says his focus is always on creating the best care experience for the patient.

“The biggest thing is open communication and communicating at the level that the patient is going to understand,” he says. “I often refer to hospitalists as medical translators. My job is to take the time to have direct communication with the consultants and then formulate that plan and relay it to the patient. It sounds simple, but I think the key is doing that consistently.”

To nominate a physician for this honor, click here for the Dinner with the Doc Nomination Form. The next deadline is June 17.