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Chikal Patel, MD (she/her/hers)

Medical Director
Optum/United HealthGroup
Mesa, Arizona

Chikal Patel is a board-certified Internist, Geriatrician and Hospice and Palliative Medicine trained physician. She currently is the Medical Director for Complex Care Management within Optum, United Health Group and covers the markets of AZ, OR and WA. In this role she has collaborated with other Optum leaders to create the Advanced Illness Program that will serve the members enrolled in the Institutional Special Needs Plan of United Health Care. It’s a member centered/family centered model of care that adapts to advanced illness. The focus of this program is to help create market palliative care teams, train the clinical team in goals of care conversations, advance care planning, and prognostication, and to encourage the team to obtain certification in Hospice and Palliative Care. Prior to this role, she has served as the Associate Program Director for Hospice and Palliative Medicine fellowship program at St. Joe’s Medical Center as well as the lead of all East Valley Palliative Care programs for Banner Health.
Dr. Patel’s strengths include communication skills, symptom management, and new program development. She is passionate about her work and loves teaching. She has been a faculty for TLC for the past 4 years now. Dr. Patel has worked closely with AzHHA and other palliative care leaders to develop the Palliative care telehealth program for Arizonans suffering from COVID-19. She is also a member of the Arizona Coalition to Transform Serious Illness Steering Committee that is working to design a Home and Community based Palliative care Model in Arizona.

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