Dr. Sunil Verma, Chief Medical Officer for Ambulatory at UCI Health

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Episode: Dr. Sunil Verma, Chief Medical Officer for Ambulatory at UCI Health
Date: January 24, 2026
Host: Scott Becker
Guest: Dr. Sunil Verma

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Episode Overview

The episode features Dr. Sunil Verma, Chief Medical Officer for Ambulatory at UCI Health. Dr. Verma shares insights on UCI Health’s evolution from a single hospital to a multi-hospital system, the organization’s focus on ambulatory care, leadership challenges, and practical advice for emerging physician leaders. The conversation spotlights how healthcare executives can navigate growth, innovation, and constant change within a complex and resource-constrained environment.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Dr. Verma’s Background and UCI Health’s Transformation

• Longevity and Roles: Dr. Verma has spent his entire 15-year career at UCI, serving as an otolaryngologist, surgeon-administrator, and associate chief medical officer.
• System Growth ([01:32]–[03:13]):
  • UCI Health has evolved from a single academic institution into a rapidly growing health system, now with six (soon seven) hospitals and over $5B in annual revenue.
  • Ambulatory care is central, with over 1.5 million patient visits annually.
  • Recent expansions include acquiring four community hospitals, building a new academic hospital, and a rehabilitation hospital (expected mid-2026).
• Quote:

  “Much of my role is focused on ensuring access, operational excellence and physician alignment as we scale ambulatory and our health system.”
  — Dr. Sunil Verma [01:58]

Trends and Priorities in Healthcare

• Growth Amidst Challenges ([03:13]–[04:22]):
  • UCI Health has thrived in a growth mode, while many healthcare systems are stagnating or consolidating.
  • Their mission increasingly balances both academic and community medicine.
• Ambulatory-First Strategy ([04:42]–[05:50]):
  • Core priority: Expanding ambulatory capacity using diverse care models (faculty practice, community affiliations, clinically integrated network).
  • Rationale: Ambulatory scalability is vital for supporting inpatient growth efficiently and sustainably.
  • Recognizes obstacles: workforce shortages, capital constraints, increasing care complexity.
• Quote:

  “If we cannot scale our ambulatory capacity appropriately, you know that our inpatient growth will become constrained, inefficient, and frankly, more expensive. So really, what we have designed is an ambulatory first approach.”
  — Dr. Sunil Verma [04:54]

Career Journey and Physician Leadership

• Motivation ([06:00]–[07:01]):
  • Returning to California after Dartmouth and medical school for the blend of patient care, teaching, and research in academic medicine.
  • Pursued an MBA to strengthen administrative skills and support career advancement within UCI.
  • Stresses importance of physician involvement in decision-making:

    “Personally, Scott, I think it's really important that physicians play a stake, you know, have a stake in our growth, in our operational decisions.”
    — Dr. Sunil Verma [06:44]

Work-Life Balance

• Finding Balance in Medicine ([07:18]–[07:39]):
  • Dr. Verma enjoys tennis, ultimate frisbee, and outdoor activities with his kids, but admits limited time at the beach.
  • Light-hearted moment when discussing surfing attempts:

    “I tried doing, taking some surfing lessons early on and realized I'm not as strong in the ocean as I thought I would be.”
    — Dr. Sunil Verma [07:34]

Advice for Emerging Leaders

• Lifelong Learning & Listening ([08:10]–[09:44]):
  • Emphasizes listening—even to the “naysayers”—to understand problems and opportunities.
  • Advocates for positivity, open-mindedness, and saying “yes” to projects outside comfort zones.
  • Leadership requires adaptability and teamwork, which is distinct from the rigid, protocol-driven world of surgery.
• Key Leadership Quote:

  “If you want to become a leader, you have to be able to say yes. So saying yes sometimes to projects that you're not exactly sure where they're going to go or what your role will be is something important to do.”
  — Dr. Sunil Verma [08:45]

Navigating Enterprise Strategy and Trade-offs

• Prioritization and Transparency ([09:59]–[11:35]):
  • Highlights the challenge of aligning innovative clinical initiatives with organizational priorities given limited resources, space, and capital.
  • Advocates for transparent decision-making and clear communication with physicians about when opportunities are “not yet” rather than “no.”
  • Preparedness is crucial: seizing the right opportunities at the right time is essential, especially amidst shifting policies and rapid market changes.
• Memorable Quotes:

  “We have to say yes to certain projects and sometimes say not yet to others so that we can stay aligned with enterprise strategy and maintain trust with physicians.”
  — Dr. Sunil Verma [10:32]
  “We're not saying no, we're saying not yet. But when it's time to pull that trigger, let's do it fast and efficiently and let's be prepared.”
  — Dr. Sunil Verma [11:49]

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• On Evolving as a System:

  “The health system has really evolved, I should say, and takes our mission of taking care of patients, both in academic and community medicine quite seriously.”
  — Dr. Sunil Verma [03:44]

• On Physician Leadership:

  “I found it very enlightening and rewarding to work with our meeting amazing administrators and physician partners at UCI Health.”
  — Dr. Sunil Verma [06:54]

• On Surfing:

  “I tried doing, taking some surfing lessons early on and realized I'm not as strong in the ocean as I thought I would be.”
  — Dr. Sunil Verma [07:34]

• On Listening to Naysayers:

  “It's important to not be a naysayer, but to listen to the naysayers and understand what the problems are.... there's always an opportunity to improve things.”
  — Dr. Sunil Verma [08:16]

• On Strategic Decisions:

  “Sometimes saying not yet is okay so that we can ensure our long term sustainability.”
  — Dr. Sunil Verma [11:07]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:32] Dr. Verma’s background and UCI Health’s evolution
• [04:42] Ambulatory expansion as a strategic priority
• [06:00] Dr. Verma’s personal and career motivations
• [08:10] Advice for emerging physician leaders
• [09:59] On aligning priorities and communicating trade-offs
• [11:35] The importance of opportunity readiness

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Tone & Closing Feel

The conversation is insightful, pragmatic, and optimistic—reflecting both Dr. Verma’s physician’s sensibility and an executive’s strategic clarity. He combines humility about ongoing challenges with a clear-eyed perspective on organizational change and leadership priorities. The discussion is laced with practical wisdom, real-world anecdotes, and encouragement for the next generation of healthcare leaders.

Transcript

[A]

The most important healthcare decisions don't happen in isolation. They happen when leaders come together. Becker's 16th annual meeting brings together more than 3,500 hospital and health system executives this April in Chicago. With 800 speakers from Ascension, Cleveland Clinic, Common Spirit and more. The conversations get real. Leaders will share how they're scenario planning for policy shifts, breaking through value based care barriers and building clinical teams that translate new ideas into real world care care. Join top decision makers in the room April 13th through the 16th. For the agenda and event details, visit BeckersHospitalReview.com and click on the Events tab in the upper right.

[B]

This is Scott Becker with the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by a brilliant physician leader. We're joined today by Dr. Sunil Verma. Dr. Verma is both a doctor and an MBA. He's a leader at the UCI Health System, University California, Irvine. His titles are many Associate Chief Medical Officer, Ambulatory he's the Health Associate Dean, UCI health associate dean, UCI School of Medicine professor. He by background is an ENT, had a neck surgery, also a Dartmouth grad. Dr. Verma, can you take a second and tell us a little bit about yourself and about UCI Irvine and about your career?

[C]

Thank you Scott. And thank you so much for having me on the podcast. So yeah, as you mentioned, Scott, I'm an otolaryngologist and I've been at UCI now for 15 years. My entire career has actually been here at University of California, Irvine, and I'm really proud to be a surgeon administrator. I still take care of patients with laryngeal disease both in the clinic and the operating room. And I really do think that makes me a better administrator to talk a little bit about my organization. UCI Health. We're a rapidly growing academic health system and we're part of the University of California. We're located in Orange county between Los Angeles and San Diego county and we're currently a 6 and soon to be a 7 hospital system with annual revenues exceeding $5 billion. My role is centered in ambulatory and our footprint in ambulatory is extensive, with more than 1.5 million patient visits annually across a continually expanding set of service lines. Much of my role is focused on ensuring access, operational excellence and physician alignment as we scale ambulatory and our health system.

[B]

Thank you and take a moment. You've got this great leadership team there, one of the best in the country where UCI Irvine, UCI Health I constantly want to call it University of California Irvine and I know it's been rebranded years ago to UCI Health. And so I'm working at that. But a magnificent system with great leadership. Talk a little bit about what are some of the key trends you're watching in health care currently while you're in a growth mode, which is magnificent in an industry where not everybody's in a growth mode.

[C]

Yeah, I'm really proud to be part of this organization, Scott. And as you're sort of alluding to, a lot has changed with our organization over the 15 years that I've been here. I do attribute it to our amazing executive leadership team who's really had the foresight to recognize that we had to go from a one hospital academic medical center to a health system. So in the last two years, there's an acquisition of four community network hospitals in addition to breaking ground and finishing construction just in December of 2025 on a separate hospital in Irvine, which is another academic hospital. In addition to that, we're building and will soon finish a rehab hospital in the middle of 2026. All of that to say that the health system has really evolved, I should say, and takes our mission of taking care of patients, both in academic and community medicine quite seriously. It's a really exciting time in Orange County. We have the opportunity to take care of a wonderful group of patients. And I really do think that we're doing a much better job than we did when I joined here a decade and a half ago.

[B]

Thank you. And talk about Dr. Verma. What are you most focused and excited about currently? You've been there for 15 years. It must some days feel like things are spinning and whirling and there's so many things going on. How do you keep yourself focused and what are you most focused on and excited about for this coming year?

[C]

Our primary priority for 2026 is strategically expanding our ambulatory capacity through multiple models of care. We have a lot of levers, Scott. We have our faculty, academic practice, we have community physician practices, affiliations, and a clinically integrated network that we need to figure out the best way to deliver care. That expansion really is essential to supporting all these hospitals I mentioned and their growth. Now, if we cannot scale our ambulatory capacity appropriately, you know that our inpatient growth will become constrained, inefficient, and frankly, more expensive. So really, what we have designed is an ambulatory first approach. For us that really means designing care so that the default is high quality, coordinated care delivered in the ambulatory setting with a hospital reserved for patients who truly need it. But, you know, as we do this we have headwinds that we're facing. Right. We have workforce limitations, we have capital constraints, and really, we have rising complexity. But we feel that if we can get ambulatory first. Right. We'll be in a really great position to continue to grow and most importantly, in a sustainable manner.

[B]

Thank you. And you've spent your entire career at UCI Health. What brought you there to begin with? What made you decide to get go there and to stay there?

[C]

So I'm originally from California, as you mentioned. I went to Dartmouth and then I came for undergrad and then came back for medical school and training. And I just really enjoy taking care of patients in California. So to be honest with you, it was a position as a laryngologist in the Department of otolaryngology, head and neck surgery that drew me. But what drew me to academic medicine was the ability to take care of patients, educate learners, and also do research, which I was very involved in for the earlier part of my career. Like many physicians, honestly, I saw an opportunity in administration and felt it would be best augmented with an mba. So invested the time into that with the support of our health system and then have really found progressive roles in the enterprise to help direct care and to be a partner not only to administrators, but physicians. Personally, Scott, I think it's really important that physicians play a stake, you know, have a stake in our growth, in our operational decisions. And I found it very enlightening and rewarding to work with our meeting amazing administrators and physician partners at UCI Health.

[B]

Thank you. Really remarkable. You talk about being in California and you're in Southern California, absolutely beautiful part of the world. You know, you're a head and neck surgeon, you're an ent. How much time does that leave for surfing and wakeboarding? Or is that not part of the daily regimen?

[C]

You know, what's part of my daily. What's part of my weekly regimen is tennis a couple times a week, ultimate Frisbee with some neighbors in our neighborhood, and getting outdoors with my kids. Unfortunately, there's not as much time at the beach as I would like. I tried doing, taking some surfing lessons early on and realized I'm not as strong in the ocean as I thought I would be.

[B]

It seems like everybody in California, at least who's on the coast, must try it at some point or another. So God bless you for trying. Talk about this. You've been a lifelong learner. I admire people went back, did your MBA while working. You obviously put a big premium on continuing to learn. Great education, Dartmouth and Keck School of Medicine. What advice would you give to emerging leaders? Aside from maybe partially being a lifelong learner? Any advice you'd give to emerging leaders?

[C]

I think always listen and see what's going on around you. You know, when you're in that surgeon's lounge or you're in your faculty meeting or you're in the doctor's dining room, you're going to hear the naysayers. I think it's important to not be a naysayer, but to listen to the naysayers and understand what the problems are. Like most things, just like we take care of patients with health problems, there's always an opportunity to improve things, and that we shouldn't look at the world as the outlook is dismal. So really, I listen to the concerns and the complaints people have and then try and connect those dots. What are the reasons that we're struggling and who do we have to talk to to improve things? So I think always keeping an open ear and an open mind. I do think that as physicians, it's important that we always stick to our core role, which is that to take care of patients and to do it in an improved manner over time. And then finally, yeah, if you want to become a leader, you have to be able to say yes. So saying yes sometimes to projects that you're not exactly sure where they're going to go or what your role will be is something important to do. I know I've struggled with, and I know physicians struggle when we don't exactly understand our role. So, you know, when I'm in the operating room, I know exactly what I'm going to do at what time that's not the case when you're thinking about leadership and administration. So you have to be able to pivot at times, step in and understand who the other members of your team are. And that's not easy necessarily. It's very different than the way we're educated as physicians. But the more physicians that are involved, the more that we can help other people in our administration make those excellent decisions and continue to improve the health of our patients.

[B]

Thank you. No, I love that. And it's a remarkable leadership career that you're having, and remarkable physician career as well. And I love this concept. One of my favorite concepts of don't listen to the naysayers. I love that. I couldn't agree with you more.

[C]

Yeah, it's been super helpful for me. I think that, you know, there's. It's really important that we have an open mind and we always Want to improve things. You know, it's tough. I mean, as we think about our academic health systems or any health system, what I love is that we have so many innovative physicians, clinicians and care teams. When you're working with people, you realize that every specialty has a legitimate need and so many initiatives make sense in isolation. But the hard thing for a health system is really that we have to prioritize. We really have to decide when to invest and where to slow down as we really work to accomplish our goals. That's a challenge. And I don't think physicians always understand that. We have to make deliberate choices. We have limited space, workforce and capital as well as leadership attention. We have to say yes to certain projects and sometimes say not yet to others so that we can stay aligned with enterprise strategy and maintain trust with physicians. As a physician leader, I really take that role very seriously. We're very transparent about the trade offs that we have to have. We try and be as consistent as we can with our decision making. And we are very clear that sometimes saying not yet is okay so that we can ensure our long term sustainability.

[B]

But I also love that concept of, I mean, you purposely intentionally said not yet, not no. And I love that we'll look at this, we'll think about it. We can't do it right now. And some of the best talks I've ever heard are by people explaining the balancing of priorities that they have to do and not sugarcoating it. This is the reality of what we have to do. I love that.

[C]

Yes, some of it's spinning plates, but you can't say yes to everything. But you have to be prepared, Scott. I mean, that's the biggest thing. We've seen changes in our legislation. We think about ambulatory and we've seen the shifts in telehealth and policies. So you have to be prepared. And when an opportunity presents itself, you have to be able to jump on it. And so that's part of the skill set of working with our physician and our administrative leaders that exactly that. We're not saying no, we're saying not yet. But when it's time to pull that trigger, let's do it fast and efficiently and let's be prepared. One real great example is just with our space and our expansion in Southern California, certain opportunities come apparent with real estate. And so you have to be very ready to go when the time is right when an opportunity presents itself. And so that means that keeping people, you know, keeping the fire burning at all times.

[B]

Irma, fantastic to visit with you. What an incredible leadership career and you're just getting started. What a pleasure to visit with you. Thank you for joining us today on the Becker's Healthcare podcast and continued good luck to UCI Health. Thank you so much for joining us.

[C]

Thank you for having me, Scott, and thank you to your entire team.