Narrative for Omar Durrani, MD

Case Number 20-35543

Overview: My name is Omar H. Durrani. I was born in Boston, MA. I currently live
with my wife Ayesha and children, Musa and Noah (ages 9 and 7), in Houston, TX. I
am a 2nd generation, solo-practice urologist with privileges at HCA Houston
Healthcare West, formerly known as West Houston Medical Center. I filed for
personal and business-related Chapter 11 bankruptcy on 11/13/2020 with
summarized business assets of $93,340.79 and liabilities of $955,847.12. My income
for the year 2020 from insurance and cash payments (see page 2 of CPA’s “Statement
of Revenues, Expenses and Retained Earnings-Tax Basis for Durrani, MD & Assoc PA
Jan through Dec 2020) was $411, 232.56.

Introduction: My story begins with my arrival in Houston in 2005 after finishing a

fellowship in minimally invasive surgery in Pittsburgh and a residency in urology in
Boston. My father, also a solo practice urologist in Houston, had wanted me to
consider joining a large private group where I could grow and develop into a
specialist in robotic and laparoscopic cases. With his encouragement, I joined the
Memorial Urology group where I stayed for 3 years on a track towards partnership. I
saw most of the hospital and nursing home consults for the group, assisted the
senior partners in their cases, and began to grow a base of patients of my own. Three
years later, I met a former Tulane graduate named Ayesha who was working as a
public school of health graduate in a research position at Baylor. We were wedded in
May 2008, had our first child, Musa, one year later and Noah one and a half years
after that. During that time, my track to partnership was taking longer than expected
and the referrals for the larger cases seemed to go to the senior partners. I
reconsidered my options and purchased the practice of a urologist retiring from the
nearby West Houston Medical Center. I also chose to spend 2 days a week working
with my father at Memorial Hermann Southwest. I learned how to run my own
private practice and took tips from my father. The experience of working with my
father was invaluable but unfortunately short-lived. In 2009, my father suffered a
hemorrhagic stroke that would be the end of his career and the end of his life four
years later. I assumed his practice overnight which included a once-weekly office
and surgery day in Angleton, a town about 40 minutes away. I kept working at these
three clinics while taking care of my mom, brother, and my wife and son Musa. (My
brother, Sikandar, has health problems including vision loss in one eye and a
permanent tracheostomy requiring a home ventilator. He and my mother have been
living on what is left of my father’s savings.) I ended up closing two offices and
running a single office at West Houston with the strong support of my hospital and
referral doctors. I was elected “Physician of the Year” at West Houston in 2012 and
served as Chair of Surgery (2015-2017) and Chief of Staff (2018-2020). Despite my
best efforts, I have been involved in several lawsuits during my career for which I
assumed my share of responsibility and I have tried to learn from each. I have
developed a more cautious approach to medicine with better patient case selection
and referral of the more complicated cases to my colleagues in the medical center.
By practicing more defensively, doing fewer complicated surgical cases, and focusing
more on customer service, I have been able to maintain a stable albeit less ambitious
career than my father would have expected for me.

Finally, it deserves mention that this financial crisis took its toll on my already-
tenuous marriage. Ayesha and I have two beautiful young boys, but we seldom
agreed on anything outside of parenting. She filed for divorce earlier this year. We
each hired counsel and went through mediation. After going through this stressful
period, we both found a renewed commitment to at least be friends in the same
house and share in the hallmark moments that our kids present each day. Ayesha
and I have separate personal bank accounts which I fund via payroll on a biweekly
basis. Our future together seems brighter now that she has accepted the idea of
moving into a more affordable home some day soon.

Personal Milestones:

2005: Moved to Houston, TX after residency and a fellowship & joined Memorial
Urology. Moved into condo at 2400 McCue Rd.
2008: Took over my father’s urology practice after his stroke and began working at
West Houston Medical Center, Memorial Southwest Hospital, and clinic in Angleton.
2008: Married to Ayesha Chawdary.
2009: Birth of our son Musa.
2010: Closed the Memorial Southwest and Angleton offices and kept West
Houston. 2011: Birth of Noah.
2012: Elected “Physician of the Year” at West Houston Medical
Center 2013: Moved into new home at 2015 Ivy Crest, Houston, TX.
2013: Father passed away.
2015: Began 2-year term as Chair of Surgery at West Houston
2018: Began 2-year term as Chief of Staff at West Houston which changed names to
HCA Houston Healthcare West
2018: Met Dr. Abdul Aziz and started DurraniMD med spa
services. 2020: Filed for personal and business bankruptcy
2021: Wife filed for divorce. Went through mediation. Decided to stay together for
the kids and resume biweekly pay to wife’s account for household and living
expenses.

Business Milestones:

2005: Moved to Houston, TX after residency and a fellowship & joined Memorial
Urology.
2006: Offered partnership in a lithotripsy partnership with the group 2007:
Purchased shares of in Sightline Radiation with $4.5 million loan to pay off
2008: Took over my father’s urology practice after his stroke and began working at
3 clinics: West Houston Medical Center, Memorial Southwest Hospital, and Angleton
Danbury Medical Center
2009: sold my shares of the lithotripsy partnership back to the group. 2010: Closed
the Memorial Southwest and Angleton offices and kept West Houston. 2012:
Elected “Physician of the Year” at West Houston Medical Center 2015: Began 2-
year term as Chair of Surgery at West Houston
2015: Sightline Radiation sold to St. Joseph Cancer Center West Houston location
2018: Began 2-year term as Chief of Staff at the same hospital
2018-2019: Met Dr. Abdul Aziz and started DurraniMD med spa services. Purchased
over $600,000 worth of machines for cosmetic and urologic health applications.
Could not generate enough income to overcome marketing and loan expenses and
lost a significant amount of personal savings totalling over $150,000 to make these
payments. Tried to find an employed job with a large local group and a private
urology group in the medical center and turned down due to lack of sufficient
productivity/volume and malpractice history. Unable to get locums tenens work due
to the same.
2020: Asked for pandemic-related mortgage payment forbearance on both home
and condo (2015 Ivy Crest Court and 2400 McCue Rd) with no mortgage payments
on either since then.
2020: Filed for personal and business bankruptcy. Terminated lease at West
Houston Medical Center 6 months before the endof the contract and moved to a
more affordable office at 9440 Bellaire Boulevard. Practicing there since then. 2021:
Sightline/St. Joseph Cancer Center $4.5 million loan paid off. Larger regular
distributions expected on a monthly basis from March onwards.
2021: Wife filed for divorce. Went through mediation at a cost of close to $6,000
personally thus far. Decided to stay together for the kids and resume biweekly pay to
wife’s account for household and living expenses.

Chapter 11 Filing:

Throughout my years in Houston, I have been blessed with excellent opportunities

to develop my career and pursue a vision of helping treat patients in the way that my
parents and professors inspired me along the way. I have always been focused on
patient care and grateful for whatever income that generated to help me and my
family sustain a living.

I ran a profitable private practice in the first several years after leaving my
employed position at Memorial Urology. I was able to pay off the urologist whose
practice I purchased and kept my expenses low by staying in the condo at McCue. I
made my first financial mistake in retrospect in 2013 when I purchased the 2015 Ivy
Crest Court home. On the plus side, it was a single story home in a gated community
close to a good public school and close to my in-laws. However, the increase in
mortgage from roughly $1500/month to over $4,000/month was more than I could
easily afford. The office practice faced declining reimbursements and I was forced to
scale
back the volume of patients seen to make more time for the family and avoid getting
into more trouble with malpractice. I was borrowing money from my late father’s
savings and having trouble making ends meet.
In 2018, I was introduced by my mother to a former physician from South Africa
looking to move his family to Houston in search of a better life. This man, Dr. Abdul
Aziz, reminded me a lot of my late father in his kindness and humility. He had a
wealth of medical experience and was looking for help in getting a residency
position in the U.S. I offered to help him and gave him a job in my office as a medical
assistant (after his certification) while applying for residency. I had just started
offering a cash-based service for erectile dysfunction which was generating almost
as much revenue as my hard-earned, insurance-based urology practice. I had a
vision of opening up a med-spa type practice where Aziz and I could make a
comfortable living based on the cash revenue that could provide for both of us while
I maintained my urology practice out of the same location. We went to all of the
aesthetic service meetings we could attend and ended up buying four more
machines totalling over $600,000 on the promise that we could make up to
$50,000/month with the right amount of marketing and competitive pricing. We
soon realized, however, that marketing was expensive and unproductive, and that no
one in our area at least had enough cash on hand to take advantage of the heavily-
reduced service prices we were offering. I poured over $150,000 of personal savings
(largely from the sale of land that my late father had owned) and even borrowed
more from my brother and my mother to make payments on the machines,
American Express personal and business credit cards, and tax payments. Instead of
providing a future for Aziz and my staff, I had to let him and my office manager go in
order to cut expenses and keep the practice afloat.

By October 2019, I could no longer afford to make payments on any of the machines
or credit cards. I concentrated on paying my remaining staff, office rent and
mortgages. With mounting debt and obligations, I decided to find a cheaper place to
practice. With 6 months left on my 5-year contract with the Lincoln Harris property
company, and after a failed attempt at finding a better deal within the same building,
I felt I had no choice to move out of my West Houston office in May 2020 to a smaller
place in Chinatown in Houston (9440 Bellaire Blvd). I had a skeleton crew of staff
and was grateful that almost all of my patients followed me there.

During the COVID 19 pandemic, I received help from a PPP loan in May 2020 for a
total of $42,500. I used these funds for payment of rent, payroll and other allowable
expenses. This was especially helpful during the times when patient volume (both
telemedicine and in-person) was severely restricted for the several-month shut
down of non-essential services in the city. Meanwhile, I tried to find an employed job
with a large local private group, two local hospitals, and another private urology
group in the medical center and was turned down likely due to a lack of sufficient
productivity/volume and malpractice history. I was also unable to get locums tenens
work for the same reasons.
I maintained the practice out of the Bellaire location, returned as much of the
equipment as I could to whichever companies requested them back, and began
looking into the idea of declaring bankruptcy.
By October, 2020, one of the creditors froze the assets in my business and personal
accounts on account of non-payment. With the tremendous help of Ms. Margaret
McClure and her team, I gathered the necessary documents to release these funds
and proceed with bankruptcy. I filed for personal and business-related Chapter 11
bankruptcy on 11/13/2020 with summarized business assets of $93,340.79 and
liabilities of $955,847.12.

With her help, and that of my office manager and accountant, we have complied with
the monthly operating expense reports and have been able to show a positive cash
flow for at least the past several months. My office practice is stable. I am still
awaiting a final settlement decision on the most recent lawsuit dating back to 2017.
Apart from that, I have tried to run a better office focused on delivering quality
patient care with exceptional customer service. I am grateful for many things,
including Margaret’s expert advice, for my wife’s recent acceptance of moving soon
to a more affordable house, for the health of my kids and my family, and for the
support of my wonderful office staff and colleagues at my hospital and beyond. I
intend to pay off my debts within my capabilities and to structure a more
responsible office and home budget. I am not cut out to be one of those successful
entrepreneurs that Aziz and I saw at the aesthetic service shows and that is perfectly
fine with me.

I plan to stick to traditional urology and strive to slowly grow the practice at a pace
that allows for continued quality care. Also importantly, I plan to decrease my
personal expenses, manage my payment obligations and settle my debts. My wife
will be graduating from law school in around 2024 and will also hopefully help
support a portion of our household expenses if she finds a good job. I thank you for
your consideration and review of my personal narrative. I respectfully ask for your
approval of my Chapter 11 plan.

Omar Durrani, MD