Editors’ Note

Dr. Yan Katsnelson is an entrepreneur, highly skilled cardiac surgeon, business owner, and philanthropist. He is the founder and CEO of USA Clinics Group, the parent company of USA Fibroid Centers, USA Vascular Centers, USA Hemorrhoid Centers, USA Prostate Centers, and USA Oncology Centers. Katsnelson has established himself as a strong advocate for accessible, affordable, and compassionate healthcare services. He has pioneered expanding minimally invasive options that provide high-quality care using the latest technology in the most advanced facilities to the communities that need it most. He also founded the Chicago Heart Institute, which was dedicated to the advanced treatments of cardiovascular diseases. Katsnelson completed a fellowship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard School of Medicine, in Boston. He was a faculty cardiac surgeon at the University of Chicago prior to starting his Cardiovascular and Thoracic surgery private practice in the Chicago Northwest suburbs. Katsnelson was the first U.S. surgeon to perform a double valve replacement using the Biocor™ tissue valve. His clinical areas of expertise included minimally invasive valve surgery, complex aortic operations, re-operative coronary and valve surgery, and beating-heart (off-pump) bypass surgery. He is published in various medical and scientific journals. His vision of healthcare combines advanced medical and informational technology and creates a unique, data-driven approach that enables individualized treatment planning and achieves consistent outcomes. He developed a comprehensive healthcare management platform to optimize each patient’s experience before, during, and after an appointment with streamlined scheduling, insurance verification, prior authorizations, clinical decision-management support, and treatment process quality assurance. Katsnelson also started the Fibroid Fighters Foundation to advance the cause of women’s health and the safe and effective minimally invasive treatment of uterine fibroids. He is a member of the international Save a Child’s Heart nonprofit organization that provides life-saving cardiac treatment to children from developing countries. Katsnelson leads the development of ECHO assisted technology that enables screening of thousands of children worldwide.

What was your vision for creating USA Clinics and how do you define its mission?

We created USA Clinics to be the go-to outpatient center for innovative treatments of common diseases. We have more than 160 locations in 30 states, with 65 percent of the U.S. population within a driving distance to one of our clinics. We are able to treat multiple conditions and believe that we are at the forefront of shaping the future of healthcare.

How critical has it been to maintain the highest levels of service and quality treatment as USA Clinics has grown its size and locations?

One of our goals and priorities is to ensure that any doctor in our organization, whether it is in New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, or any other location, provides the same level of care and seamless service that USA Clinics is known for. In order to ensure this consistency, we rely on data – every symptom, every finding, every measurement – and we use this information to make sure that care treatment options are carefully suggested based on the data. Twelve years ago, we created a software company, PracticeCompass, to develop a comprehensive end-to-end healthcare operating system to enable this work. In many ways, USA Clinics is a software company that delivers medical care.

Do you feel that there is an effective awareness and understanding of the services that USA Clinics provides?

We believe at USA Clinics that patients are in charge of their health, and they need to be educated about the condition they may have and the best course of treatment. We focus on a cure rather than on care – we are looking to cure the problem so that people can enjoy a higher quality of life. We know that education is key, and we do this through traditional media, digital channels, and other platforms to build awareness and understanding for our services.

Where do you see growth opportunities for USA Clinics?

We have 38 locations in New York City alone and have a presence in almost 30 states. We study the market to understand its needs in order to evaluate opportunities and are looking first at highly populated areas before we expand into secondary markets.

We are able to grow because of the talent and expertise of our team, from our doctors to our personnel at all levels of the organization.

Did you imagine in the early days that USA Clinics would become what it is today?

Neither me nor my wife, Dr. Flora Katsnelson, who helped me to grow the organization from the very beginning, could have ever imagined how USA Clinics has grown since its founding, When we started with a focus on veins, everyone asked me why we would do this since I was a heart surgeon, but a few years later the same people asked me how I knew that our approach was the right one. It started with veins and then went to fibroids, and is continuing to expand. Our treatments work and provide a consistent cure, and we have an opportunity to help millions of patients. This is the future of medicine.

You mentioned fibroids. Will you elaborate on this work?

Fibroid disease is one of the most common diseases that women face in their lives (and the most common non-cancerous tumor in women). Eighty percent of Black women and seventy percent of white women by the age of 50 will develop fibroid disease which mostly presents itself with a heavy, painful, and prolonged menstrual cycle. One out of three patients unfortunately get a hysterectomy, which is absolutely not necessary in the vast majority of benign cases. My wife and I started the Fibroid Fighters Foundation, a nonprofit arm, to build awareness and educate women, especially young women, about this condition so they will stop suffering in silence and will choose a minimally invasive treatment instead of surgery such as a hysterectomy.

What led you to creating USA Longevity Centers and how important is early detection to addressing disease?

In my opinion, 70 percent of deaths are preventable – it is half cancer and half heart disease. If we can diagnose cancer at a very, very early stage, we can cure it. If we can diagnose heart disease at a very, very early stage, we can treat it and often reverse it before it becomes deadly. With this in mind, I believe that the focus on early diagnosis, especially with CT scans that capture both cancer and vascular problems, is the future.

This also dramatically impacts the cost of care since early detection creates the ability for treatment in an outpatient facility, which is a fraction of the cost of performing surgeries in a hospital setting.

This is why we have created USA Longevity Centers, currently in New York and Chicago, with plans to expand to multiple locations over the next few years.

How special has it been for you to be able to build the business with your wife as your partner?

It has been amazing. My wife is a physician as well, an internal medicine doctor, and she has a deep passion for helping people. She has been extremely helpful in our expansion to different areas beyond vascular diseases and I have been so blessed to have a partner that has participated in every aspect of the business every step of the way. Hopefully our children, who are both currently in medical school, will join us when ready and continue to grow the organization.

What has made a career in medicine so special for you?

I decided I wanted to pursue medicine when I was 12 years old. My mother was a radiologist at a lung surgery center in Russia, and I was amazed at the way surgeons were able to change people’s lives. When I immigrated to Israel, I was blessed to join a heart surgery program which helped me to achieve my dream. It has been a calling from a very young age.