Kiran C. Patel

Kiran C. Patel (born 1949) is a Zambian-born Indian American philanthropist, serial entrepreneur, hotelier and cardiologist.

Patel was born in Zambia in 1949 to a Hindu Gujarati Indian family. He got his primary education under the British educational system in Zambia and earned diplomas from Cambridge University and the University of London. Patel attended medical school in India at Smt NHL Municipal Medical College, Gujarat University and completed his internship in Africa. In 1976, he moved to the United States. Patel did his residency in internal medicine in New Jersey in 1980, and completed a fellowship in the cardiology program affiliated with Columbia University of New York in 1982.

After moving to Tampa, Florida in 1982, Patel began his practice as a cardiologist. In 1985, he started a physicians practice ownership and management company, which quickly expanded to 14 practices including family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics and cardiology. In 1992, Patel became chairman of the board of Well Care HMO, INC. which under his leadership became this 5th largest Medicaid HMO in the United States. In 1999, he acquired 55% of Kingston N.Y.-based WellCare Management Group Inc, which managed two HMO's in Connecticut and New York. In 2002, he sold majority share in the WellCare Management Group, at which point WellCare Management was providing services to over 400,000 members. In 2007, Patel started a new insurance holding company called America's 1st Choice Holdings of Florida and acquired two Tampa Bay based Medicare Advantage Health Plans, Freedom Health and Optimum Health. He grew these companies to over 115,000 members and over $1 billion in revenue, at which point he sold to Anthem in April 2019.

In 2018, Patel invested $60 million in the medical device company Concept Medical. He committed to gift $50 million and an additional $150 million towards real estate and facility expansion in the medical education complex that will be part of NSU’s Tampa Bay Regional Campus, in Clearwater.

In 1992, Patel bought Well Care HMO, Inc. (Well Care) for approximately $5 million. He sold the company a decade later in 2002 for $200 million.

In 2007, he purchased Freedom Health and Optimum Healthcare Inc.

In 2017, he sold his second insurance company — America’s 1st Choice (including Freedom Health and Optimum Healthcare) to Anthem Inc. for an undisclosed amount.

On 17 August 2009, a whistleblower filed a complaint with the district court in Tampa, alleging that Freedom was manipulating enrollment rolls. Patel and his brother Rupesh Shah were among the named defendants. The complaint also alleged that Freedom was engaging in service-area-expansion fraud — misrepresenting the number of health-care providers in its network in certain counties so that it could expand the areas in which it offered Medicare Advantage. Once the investigation was announced, Patel told employees "not to destroy documents or other evidence" in an emergency meeting.