S. Nicholas Desai, DPM, MBA, FACFAS is the chief operating officer, chief medical officer and chief quality officer at Houston Methodist Cypress Hospital, as well as the chief medical officer and chief quality officer at Houston Methodist Sugar Land Hospital. He is also a practicing physician in the Houston Methodist Specialty Physician Group in Houston, Texas.

Dr. Desai is a board-certified foot and ankle surgeon and tenured healthcare executive with experience in large-scale integrated delivery networks. Dr. Desai is a senior executive whose focus is to bridge the gap between innovation, clinical quality and operations systemwide. Dr. Desai is responsible for hospital strategy, innovation portfolio, medical staff, hospital and quality operations and serves as an executive advisor for the Houston Methodist Center for Innovation. Dr. Desai has led Houston Methodist Sugar Land Hospital to achieve the Vizient Bernard A. Birnbaum, MD, Quality Leadership award in 2021 (#4), 2022 (#2) and 2023 (#3), demonstrating consistent top performance in safety and mortality.

When serving as system CMIO, Dr. Desai focused on providing digitally innovative tools that promoted efficiency and allowed clinicians to focus on patient care. His overarching goal has always been to help clinicians leverage digital IT solutions that make the “P2P” (physician-patient) experience simple, mobile and intuitive. Desai has led large scale IT clinical implementations across various health systems with strategic focus on clinical transformation and financial stewardship as we shift from volume to value-based care. In 2021, Desai was selected to the inaugural class of Modern Healthcare’s Top 25 Innovators.

From a clinical perspective, Desai has been practicing at Houston Methodist for over 16 years in combined administrative and clinical roles with a subspecialty care focus on adult and pediatric foot and ankle surgery. Desai remains active in clinical research with a specialized lower extremity focus with respect to cardiovascular disease, limb salvage, biomechanics and reconstructive foot surgery.

Prior to joining Houston Methodist, Desai was at Memorial Hermann, where he served in both clinical and administrative leadership roles, including Chief of Surgery, Vice President of Medical Staff and Regional Medical Director of Information Technology. While at Memorial Hermann, key focus areas included design and implementation of Cerner Millennium Application Suite (Care4), development of clinical workflows and order set enterprise standardization, development of

medical device integration standards, implementation of cost efficiencies in OR throughput and achievement of Leapfrog Safety recognition.

At his core, Desai is a physician first but is also a passionate investor, entrepreneur and incubator for early stage and small to mid-sector healthcare firms. He has led many private equity and family fund JV relationships across the Texas, New York and California markets. To date, Desai has been involved in several large-scale healthcare technology startups and helped launch the IPO of two of these companies.

Desai is an avid oenophile, father of two and enjoys golf, tennis and travelling. He is a philanthropist at heart, supporting charities involving children in the US and abroad.