Ingram's October 2022

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LUIS COUCHONNAL Healient Physician Group/St. Joseph Medical Center His father was a physician. His paternal grandfather was a physician. His maternal grandfather? Yep, a physician. So the first steps on his path to cardiology might not have been pre-ordained, but there’s no denying the influences that steered young Luis Couchonnal through Rockhurst High School, Notre Dame, and back home to the University of Kansas School of Medicine. Couchonnal is with Healient Physician group, which specializes in cardiology cases, but he’s in a niche within that niche as a cardiac electrophysiologist. “Patients usually see a regular cardiologist or interventional cardiologist before they see me,” he says. “I tell them, ‘you’ve seen the plumber; I’m the electrician of the group, working with pacemakers, defibril lators, atrial fibrillation ablations and ITC ablations,” he says.

The Omnipotence Paradox holds that there can be no winner when the fabled irresistible force meets the unmov able object. But that’s not always the case, now, is it? Just look at health care. Going on three years ago, a fairly irresistible force was unleashed on the world in the form of a virus with pandemic reach. Here in the Kansas City region, it met its match: A medical community that continues to stand fast today. You see these immovable figures in the faces of Ingram’s 2022 Top Doctors—15 physicians from a broad range of med ical disciplines that include cardiology, pulmonology, plastic surgery, emergency medicine and more. COVID-19 changed the way many in health care practiced the healing arts. For some, it was a wholesale revision of work routines, and people deferred preventive care and shunned medical facilities during the peak of the pandemic concern. For some others, the impact was minimal—the emergen cy room or, in many cases, the operating room filled with patients whose needs were both unanticipated and urgent. It’s interesting how these physicians, exemplars of compe tence and compassion that their peers say they’d be looking for to treat themselves or a member of their family, now view what they do from a new perspective. They have a renewed appreciation for what it means to be alive, what it means to be healthy to enjoy life, and what their work does to help others fully embrace life’s promise and potential. For more than 25 years, Ingram’s has sounded out the leading health-care providers in this region to help determine who among their ranks delivers the highest levels of care. This year’s honorees again stand tall with that distinction. And what they bring to this region is not limited to patient care alone: By providing for their patients, they help make the Kansas City region a leading light in health care, drawing talented workers to the Heart of America and elevating an entire community in the process. Please join us in congratulating them and thanking them for all they do. Standing Watch for the Common Good By providing exceptional health care, the 2022 Top Doctors produce outcomes that strengthen entire communities.

His father’s work as a special ist in infectious diseases was a distinctly different discipline, but the lasting influence came from accompanying him on his rounds and watching the way he took care of patients and in teracted with them. Couchonnal was determined from an ear ly age to merge his interest in science with a goal of helping other people. Cardiology filled that urge, he says, because it “involved a lot of science and

tech.” The deal was sealed during his training at Emory Uni versity in Atlanta, where he witnessed the power of cardiology to elevate a patient’s quality of life. “The thing I think is unique about my practice, this is a bit of smaller practice group, so we can offer more personalized care,” he says. “It’s important that when patients need to be seen, that they are seen quick ly, that means the same day or within 24 hours. That should be something all health-care systems should strive for. We’re really focused on taking care of the patients when they need you, not to wait three months. Taking care of them earlier on in their illness, so they don’t get worse and then have to be admitted to the emergency room and have a longer recovery period.” Couchonnal needs not look far to find validation for his choice of cardiology. One recent case he recalls involved a patient whose heart issues had rendered him unable to do simple daily activities. “We found an abnormal heart rhythm and we were able to cure it,” he says. “Within a few weeks, he was feeling better, exercising, and off the medicines he had been on. His heart function went from 20 percent to normaliz ing, up to 60 percent.” The patient wrote a letter thanking him for the successful treatment and describing the change in his quality of life. “Those kinds of cases,” Couchonnal says, “make you feel good about yourself, motivate you to become a better physician to offer those outcomes to everyone. I don’t look at what I do as a job; I look at it as a passion. I don’t feel like I go to work—I feel like I get to help people every day.”

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I n g r a m ’ s

Kansas City’s Business Media

October 2022