Meet Dr. Jonathan Fialkow, Chief of cardiology, chief medical executive, value and primary care for Baptist Health and deputy director of Baptist Health Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute. Watch and learn more about his views on medicine and what inspires him to make a difference in cardiac care.
My name is Doctor Jonathan Falco. I am the Chief medical executive at Baptist Health. I am the Deputy Medical Director of the Miami Cardiac and Vasal Institute and Chief of Cardiology at Baptist Health. I'm the head of population health and value and I oversee our medical specialties in primary care. I grew up in Long Island, which was to me a wonderful place to grow up. My father when I was starting my senior high school in Long Island in the middle of night had a massive heart attack. A doctor came in and basically said um to my mom, your husband's in kidney failure. Um and we're taking care of it and he walked out and we were just in shock. What does that mean? And then about an hour later, a younger doctor came in and a woman who said, let me explain what's happening. It's not unusual that the kidneys take a stress from a heart attack, we think and it was the same information but delivered in a completely different way. And I said to my mom, I, I wanna be a doctor and I wanna be that kind of doctor. I wanna ease people's pains. All right, poppy. The main thing is having the empathy, I put myself in the patient or the family members position. And that is our mission. That is our goal. We wanna take care of the patient, not the disease. I'm actually an art history major, which is a kind of right brain, left brain type of thing. And maybe that's why I tend to approach health care and medicine a little differently than a lot of my colleagues who are, who are brilliant and wonderful, but maybe a little more pure scientific related. If I really think something's important, it's all gas, no breaks. I really wanna bring people along with me in a positive journey. I always tried to think of ways that we and I can get information to the community. What are the general symptoms? So we started about this health talk, the podcast about three years ago. People come up to me on the street, you know, seriously people, I mean, oh, you do the podcast. I love that podcast. I'm like, ok, it's something I enjoy with. Um our, well, my wife and I have been married. We just celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary. We're blessed to have three Children. My oldest son is married for four years. Then I have 28 year old twins and all three live in New York City. And really, there's nothing I'd rather do than spend time with my family. I always say the worst legacy I gave my kids growing up in Florida is making them fans of my New York sports teams. I'm a passionate New York Jets fan. I'm a New York Knicks fan. The Mets fan. My dogs are named after, you know, met players over the years. I have two golden retriever puppies and one is named Mookie and the other is named Wilson. So I'm just passionate about dogs. I think they're God's greatest gift to man. But I've always been kind of geeky in the sense that I love Japanese anime, Marvel Star Wars to have a Godzilla collection in my office at Baptist. I have like toy robots and some people said, well, you know, you're a professional, that's me. It's, this office is my reflection of who I am and what I am and they make me happy and I don't think they're really affecting my decisions in any way and no one's asked me to take them away just yet.
