Dr. Surinder Kumar Bhatia, our loving father, grandfather, brother, and uncle, passed away on January 25, 2017, after a long and difficult battle with cancer. Born in India, Dr. Bhatia studied medicine there and continued it in England. Through medicine, Dr. Bhatia met the love of his life, Mira Bhatia, a fellow medical student at Amritsar Medical College. After marrying in 1962, both Dr. Bhatia’s left India in the early 1960s, initially moving to England and then to the United States.
His desire to continue his medical training brought Dr. Bhatia to Oklahoma City in 1970, where he trained as a fellow in cardiology at the University of Oklahoma. From 1973 to 2016, he practiced the full spectrum of inpatient and outpatient cardiology at Oklahoma City’s Saint Anthony Hospital. Dr. Bhatia had an instrumental role in the hospital’s leadership in field based heart attack response, interventional cardiology, and cardiac intensive care. His 43 years at St. Anthony coincided with significant advances in interventional cardiology, and Dr. Bhatia continued to learn the new techniques and advances to provide the best, state-of-the-art care to patients. Additionally, he mentored trainees from the University of Oklahoma in medicine and cardiology and provided specialist services to veterans at Tinker Air Force Base.
Admired both by the patients whom he had the privilege to treat and by the colleagues with whom he worked, Dr. Bhatia was respected universally for his keen diagnostic instincts, his compassionate bedside manner, and his integrity. Before he treated anyone, he personally obtained a full medical and family history from his patients. From that information, he would usually know the patient’s illness, long before diagnostic test results or other invasive studies had returned for evaluation.
Dr. Bhatia was a devoted husband, married for over forty years to Dr. Mira Bhatia, who preceded him in passing. Dr. Bhatia is survived by: his two sons, Rajiv, a physician living in San Francisco, Vineet, an attorney living in Houston, four grandchildren, Nina Anne Bhatia, Ananya Li Bhatia-Lin, Neal Ajay Bhatia, and Nikhil Kuai Bhatia-Lin, his brother, Narender Bhatia, and three sisters, Asha Khanna, Veena Puri, and Madhu Sud and their families and also the family of his beloved wife Mira. He is also survived by an extended family of life-long friends from his early years in Oklahoma City and his St. Anthony’s family of health professionals.
The services will be at Vondol L. Smith & Son Mortuaries Colonial Chapel, 13125 North MacArthur at 11:30 a.m. on January 28, 2017. Dr. Bhatia was an advocate for St. Anthony Hospital and asked that,
In lieu of flowers, Dr. Bhatia requested that memorials be made to the Sisters Fund, C/O St. Anthony Foundation, 601 NW 11th Street, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73103. www.givetosaints.com