We recently connected with Dr. Angelina Postoev and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Dr. Angelina, thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.

My husband, Dr. Chris Ibikunle, my partner in business as well as life, and I both chose professions where we could help people. We chose to become surgeons and over time, concentrated our medical specialties to provide patients with not only the highest quality of affordable medical and surgical care but to also provide end-to-end services that improve the patient’s overall quality of life.

We have set up our company, IBI Healthcare Institute with divisions that work together strategically to deliver a personalized treatment plan to each patient. This treatment plan is customized by evaluating each patient’s health and circumstances from a 360-degree angle to determine the best form of treatment for that patient.

The greatest challenge for us was creating this business model. We were both doctors and as such, our expertise was in treating patients, handling trauma, and surgeries, and helping restore health to sick people. We had to learn how to set up a business and run it with all the elements necessary while also being available to perform our jobs as surgeons. It was a very challenging time but we put in a lot of hard work, we learned a lot, and we did what we had to do.

We would encourage others who wish to start their own practice to concentrate on three key elements.
First focus on the end goal and what you would like your business to accomplish. Then begin working toward that goal with an “out-of-the-box” type approach. Challenging assumptions or traditional ways of doing things help discover innovative solutions.

Secondly, do not give up. There will be challenges and roadblocks but this is normal and to be expected. You are going to make mistakes and you may have to back up and try a different approach. Keep going, you will eventually find what works best for your situation. Our business is unique and has become what it is today through many trials and errors and learning experiences. Because we kept going and never gave up, we are able to help many people today and that makes all of the hard work and challenges we faced worth it.

Last, but very important is to give back to your community. Helping others is such a vital part of a healthy nation and something that if everyone practiced would make a huge impact not only in our communities, and nation but in the whole world.

After years of partnering with other local organizations, we now have a non-profit organization that was formed to help indigent patients by providing surgeries (often life-saving) at low or no cost to them. We are working to grow the non-profit so we will be able to cast a wider net and help more people. We hope that in changing this patient’s life, they will find a way to change someone else’s life, and then perhaps the movement will continue to escalate and this goodwill can multiply and benefit many others.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

IBI has a state-of-the-art surgical center, a weight loss/bariatric surgery division, and a cosmetic surgery practice. We can look at patient care from what is best for the patient and we do not have to follow constraints imposed by a hospital or medical facility. We were pioneers in this different approach to medical care and in deviating from the traditional business model.

We understand that each patient does not require the same type of care and we are dedicated to tailoring a custom plan for each patient to provide them with the best results. The IBI Healthcare Institute divisions work together to provide continuity of care for each patient.

For example, a patient who suffers from obesity may undergo bariatric surgery at the IBI Bariatric Surgery Center and lose a large amount of weight. The weight loss will improve their health and may also reduce or eliminate obesity-related conditions such as type 2 diabetes. Many times these patients will end up with a significant amount of loose skin that can cause medical issues and affect their emotional health if left untreated.

Next, IBI Surgicare Arts & Aesthetics come into the picture. We perform cosmetic surgery to correct the loose skin and to eliminate any health-related conditions it may be creating. These patients can now do things that they could not before, even everyday things like playing unhindered with their children in the park.

Another major benefit is to the patient’s emotional health as their self-esteem is restored. It is so rewarding to watch the progress of these patients and know we played a little part in helping them achieve these changes. We also provide ongoing services for these patients to help them maintain their weight loss goals and we do everything we can to support them in maintaining their life-altering changes.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

I have a very interesting story about how I met my business partner.

My business partner and I own the practice 50/50, we started it together and we are running it together.
We met during training at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio when we were surgical residents. He was a year ahead of me in his residency and the first year that I was there we did not cross paths much as we were in different hospitals all the time. I had seen him around and knew he was in the program but had not had a chance to speak or interact with him.

During my second year of residency (his third) about halfway through the year, we began working together doing critical care of patients He was the Senior Resident and I was a Junior Resident and there was an incident while running the rounds one morning. ( the time when all the residents and students go around from patient to patient and door to door in the morning to see everybody and make plans for the day)

There was this other character there that was saying something that didn’t make sense to me and he began to irritate me. it usually takes a lot to get me mad but he succeeded in doing just that. I quickly turned around and as I walked away from the guy I proceeded to cuss him out in Russian under my breath. The problem with that was, that I had completely forgotten that my, now husband, spoke Russian and he busted out laughing. After that, it kind of put him on the map and we continued to have rotations together but he was busy in the operating room and I was running the unit. We both became part of a group that hung out after work together and sometimes we would all go get a drink but we became friends. Then a few years down the road we started dating, then we got married and then we started our practice together.

I guess long story short, I not only found an appropriate business partner but I also found a husband and a friend.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

My answer is absolutely! I love what I do! You cannot go into medicine without truly loving what you do and you absolutely cannot go into surgery without loving what you do.

The profession takes a lot of dedication and it takes a lot of time away from family and friends. We spend our twenties and sometimes early thirties just learning the craft and getting comfortable with it.

I was 31 when my husband and I finally started our private practice. It was a long process and it took me from the time I was 16 when I started college, to age 31 to finish my undergraduate degree, complete medical school, 5 years of residency, and a year of Fellowship.

During this time I was literally studying or working between 80 and 120 hours a week. People do not believe me when I tell them how many hours we had to put in. People have no idea! Even when they required us to not work more than 80 clinical hours, we still had to study our butts off. We were in the books outside of those 80 hours because we still had to pass our board exams

I worked day and night, 30-hour shifts every third day, sometimes every second day in some hospitals. If I did not like, or did not want that specialty, or enjoy what I was doing, I would hate my life. If people choose surgery or their specialty in general, for any other reason, they will not want to stay in that field.

I am very happy that we chose to open a private practice because most people normally dislike surgery when they don’t work for themselves, work for a large hospital, or a practice they are not happy with where someone else is dictating to them what they must do.

As doctors, we are not trained to be told what to do, we are trained to make decisions and to be leaders of a team.
For instance, doctors can become unhappy with their profession when insurance is telling them what to do instead of trusting them to do their jobs and to make decisions based on what is best for their patients.

If the doctor wants to perform one type of surgery but the insurance says no you have to use this other type of surgery or the doctor wants to prescribe a specific medication and the insurance says no you have to use this other medication it can become discouraging.

I am also happy that I did my cosmetic surgery Fellowship 5 years after we opened our private practice to add that additional skill set to the practice. If I could go back, I would do all of these steps again without changing anything.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.surgicarearts.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/surgicarearts/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SurgiCareArts/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/drpostoev
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYeKlbDY2Y59hscdN9U1j2w?app=desktop
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@real.dr.runway

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