Dr Fatih Mehmet Gul — Physician, International Healthcare CEO
who has run large hospitals and a multi-asset portfolio, taken a group to a public listing and built new capacity across the Gulf — carrying the P&L, and using technology to make care better for the people delivering and receiving it
6 hospitals
led across Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar — from greenfield builds to a listed group’s flagship
800+ beds
run as Country CEO across three hospitals, with Cedars-Sinai, Asan and German academic partners
USD 764M
IPO on the Saudi Tadawul, 119 times oversubscribed
USD 500M
Fakeeh University Hospital, Dubai — a greenfield teaching hospital commissioned through the pandemic
Honorary Professor, UCL · Three times in Forbes Middle East’s top 50 healthcare leaders · Newsweek Global Hospital CEO Circle · Author, Connected Care
About
For more than twenty years I have run hospitals in the Gulf — the region that has built more new hospital capacity, faster, than anywhere else in the world — working to American and international clinical standards with partners from Los Angeles to Seoul. I have led large single hospitals and a multi-asset portfolio, taken a group through a stock-market listing, turned a hospital to profit and built new ones from the ground up.
What interests me now is how that discipline travels — to boards, investors and universities planning, opening or renewing hospitals, wherever they are, and to the people who will one day have to run them.
I teach at University College London, wrote Connected Care on why the most important transformation in healthcare is relational rather than technical, and host The Chief Healthcare Officer, a podcast with health system leaders across the world — because the lessons have turned out to be more useful shared than kept.
Lessons
What more than twenty years of building and running hospitals has taught me
01
On deciding what to build
Most of the problems I've inherited in a hospital's fifth year were created in its first month — the bed count, the case mix, the building itself. I've come to believe the most valuable conversation in any project is the one before the architect is appointed.
02
On building
A hospital designed by people who will never run it is a different building from one designed by people who will. I've stood on both sides, and the second is cheaper in the end.
03
On commissioning
The distance between handover and the first complex case is where budgets and reputations go missing. It can be closed in months, not years, if it is treated as a clinical programme rather than a construction milestone.
04
On running the place
Quality, people, payers and the numbers, every month, without a head office to call. The discipline is unglamorous and it is the whole job.
05
On turning around and moving on
Bringing an asset back to breakeven is mostly about honesty — with the board, the clinicians and the numbers. Preparing it for a listing is about telling the truth well.
06
On what the Gulf got right
It built for the operating model rather than the building, bought international standards rather than reinventing them, and held its executives to the numbers. A stretched health system can borrow all three without the money.
Stay in touch
I write about the work — building and running hospitals, technology, leadership, the people I learn from — and I share what I'm doing: new pieces, podcast episodes, talks, and the occasional update on where I am and what I'm thinking about. If you'd like to hear from me directly, leave your email.