Dr. Darryl Elmouchi

Dr. Darryl Elmouchi, MBA ‘16

Making a difference in medicine

Physician leader Darryl Elmouchi, MBA ‘16, knows how to handle stressful situations — but was still surprised at the extent to which the Michigan Ross Executive MBA Program pushed him. 

Every physician probably comes to Ross thinking it will be a cakewalk compared to medical school. It’s not. I knew it would be difficult to juggle my work at Ross and being a father of three with a very busy job. I did not anticipate how it makes you think. It’s incredibly challenging.

And Darryl knows challenging. After receiving his undergrad degree in history from UCLA, he enrolled at U-M and got his MD. After completing his internship and residency at the University of California-San Francisco and a fellowship in cardiology and cardiac electrophysiology at U-M, Darryl took a position with Spectrum Health as Medical Director, Cardiac Electrophysiology. 

Looking at the healthcare industry as a whole, he saw opportunities for improvement. “The business of medicine is not efficient,” says Darryl. “There’s a ton of money that pours in without good results.” 

He wanted to make a difference, but knew he needed to learn business skills first. He decided to come to Ross. 

“I chose Ross for a few reasons. They have an excellent general management program. They’re well run, they’re established — I didn’t want to go somewhere that’s only been around a couple of years. I was also interested in applied learning through ExecMAP.” 

His decision to come to Ross has paid off. “Before Ross, I was about 80 percent physician and 20 percent leader. Now I’m helping to run a system of 12 hospitals with billions in revenue. I never would have gotten this job without my MBA from Ross, and I definitely would have been hobbled without the things I learned at Ross.” 

The leadership component was particularly helpful. “One of the biggest benefits of the leadership program at Ross is change management. Any executive in any industry is dealing with change all the time. Ross gives you a systematic process for managing change I had never been exposed to before.” 

Darryl was also impressed by the faculty. “I was blown away by Professor Izak Duenyas. I never thought operations and supply chain would be interesting, but it applies to everything. He is so engaging, it was really beneficial.

“I had Professor Amitabh Sinha for statistics. I use statistics a lot as a physician, and I even took a graduate course in statistics before coming to Ross, but I never fully understood stats until I took his course.”

Darryl is on the forefront of what he believes is the next wave in medicine. “Historically, leaders in medicine were solely business people without an understanding of the clinical work, and that led to sacrifices in quality and patient care,” he says. “In the future, physicians are going to become more engaged outside of medicine. Only the smart and efficient will survive — and they’ll come from Ross.”