Ep 235: Turning Pain Points into AI Innovations with Dr. Prakash Gatta
Turning Pain Points Into Innovation | Dr. Prakash Gatta
FULL DESCRIPTION
Dr. Prakash Gatta is a foregut and esophageal surgeon who built his hospital's surgical program from zero — and then built two healthcare technology companies from the pain points he kept running into in the OR. In this episode of BOSS: Business of Surgery, host Dr. Amy Vertrees talks with Dr. Gatta about what happens when surgeons stop waiting for someone else to solve the problems they see every day.
Company #1: Uncover — Dr. Gatta serves as VP of Clinical Affairs for this AI-powered surgical documentation platform. Uncover analyzes intraoperative video in real time and generates detailed, accurate operative notes automatically. Poor operative notes correlate with worse patient outcomes and cause 15-20% undercoding on procedures — a financial gap that affects both surgeon compensation and hospital facility fees. Uncover closes that gap by turning video into documentation, identifying missed CPT codes, modifier 22s, and APC codes that surgeons never capture.
Company #2: EmpowerMedical.ai — Dr. Gatta founded this physician financial transparency platform to answer a question most surgeons have never been able to ask: how much money do I actually generate for my hospital? Using publicly available CMS data and hospital-disclosed pricing, the platform converts a surgeon's case list into a complete financial picture — professional fees, facility revenue, payer mix, DRGs, APCs, and contribution margin. A surgeon performing 124 high-level hernia repairs generates $464,000 in professional fees and $12 million in total system revenue. Most surgeons have no idea. Dr. Gatta wants to make this tool free for all trainees entering practice.
The conversation also covers Dr. Gatta's remarkable personal story: born in India, raised in Kuwait during the Gulf War, self-evacuating as a 13-year-old refugee, medical school in Bombay, and arriving in the US in 2000 for surgical training under pioneer Lee Swanstrom in Portland.
🎙️ Website: prakashgatta.com | EmpowerMedical.ai (free blog on coding & billing)
💼 LinkedIn: Dr. Prakash Gatta | Host: Dr. Amy Vertrees | bosssurgery.com
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