Chaitanya Patel: Golden guru

He cures! He scores! At £615 a night and a client list to shame The Ivy , the man behind the Priory is hailed as much as an entrepreneur as a doctor. But is he happy? Well, he's just sold it for a healthy £875m...

More than three decades later, such instinctive canniness has not deserted the 50-year-old doctor-cum-businessman. Last Tuesday, the Priory Group of rehabilitation clinics, of which Patel is chief executive, was sold to the Dutch bank ABN Amro for £875m. It is thought the sale made him a personal fortune of £10m, as well as increasing his share options in the group to a value approaching £40m.

The celebrated Priory Hospital in south-west London is the jewel in the crown of this health giant. At £615 a night per bed, it is no surprise most patients drying out there seem to be from the celebrity set. Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, supermodel Kate Moss, television presenter Michael Barrymore and the Marquess of Blandford are among an impressive cast list of former Priory patients who have checked in to the Roehampton clinic. But the "tough love" approach the Priory follows in its 14 other branches around Britain generate handsome profits too. In no small part, this is due to defence chiefs signing a contract to hand care for soldiers with psychological problems - ranging from eating disorders to alcoholism - to the Priory in December 2003. It seems one man's illness is another man's fortune.

Which prompts the question, does Chaitanya Patel see himself primarily as a doctor or a businessman? He would probably say he's a doctor first, but that there's no need to decide - the two are compatible, as are the experiences he has had in directing more than 100 companies, in academe, in the City, at the high table of British politics and in the law courts. For a man with a vocation for curing others, he has shown a remarkably happy knack of also making money.

Patel was born in Uganda in 1954 to Asian parents and came to the UK, via India, in 1969. His father was a frustrated would-be doctor who ran a shop on a housing estate in Putney, where the family settled. Although a brilliant painter, to the delight of Patel's relatives he studied medicine at Southampton University, where one of his contemporaries on the course, Heather Stevens, was to become his wife. After qualifying he worked as a doctor in Bournemouth. But, disenchanted after five years at the coal face and depressed by underfunding, he quit to become a research fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford in 1985. Here he had time to reflect on the state of the NHS in general and the treatment of the elderly in particular.

The suave and handsome doctor could have climbed the public health sector ladder with ease, had he wished. He was also a member of the Royal College of Physicians. But having concluded that the system had become more about managing resources and less about caring for people, he envisaged replacing the traditional healthcare model with a commercial one, where accountability to the patient could be guaranteed.

Against the wishes of his wife - a highly rated GP and supporter of the NHS - and other close relatives, Patel showed his first flash of entrepreneurial drive in abandoning medicine for the City. The move alienated him from his family, but he said he was embarking on the change of course to learn about money in order to improve the lot of others. Patel insists his wealth is an unintended side-effect of his decision.

Patel's keen intelligence had persuaded a neighbour in his village - who happened to be a senior man at Merrill Lynch - to give him a job as a trainee. He flourished from the outset, training in America and impressing his bosses. He landed a job with Lehman Brothers and, in 1988, set up his first company, Court Cavendish, which specialised in nursing homes for the elderly. He made rapid returns on the £1m he invested in it, even if his workload meant he saw little of his wife and two young daughters. The big break came in 1989, when rival company Ladbroke sold out to Court Cavendish for £29m. Almost overnight the business grew sixfold. Within five years it was launched on the stock market, the fifth-largest operation of its kind in Britain. After eight years it was valued at £67m and party to a merger to become Care First. Patel was eventually ousted from the new company but, with the backing of City investors, he took over the Westminster Healthcare Group in 1999. The deal was worth £350m. A year later, he added the Priory Group to his portfolio.

The Priory became the place for the smart celeb in rehab to be seen, giving rise to suspicions that it was being discreetly marketed as such, which rather goes against the grain of low-key, low-profile care. Patel did nothing to diminish the suspicion by admitting he saw the Priory as an "aspirational brand".

His prominence attracted powerful people. Having cornered the market in caring for the elderly, Patel came to the attention of politicians, notably Tony Blair, who has apparently regarded him as his favourite health guru. Patel has long been a close adviser to the Prime Minister on health, also working with the former Secretary of State for Health, Alan Milburn, acting as a trustee of Help the Aged and heading a government task force on care homes. The work for the governing party has not gone unnoticed. In 1999 - the year he donated £5,000 to New Labour - he was made a CBE for services to the development of social care policies.

But trouble was not far away. A report published in 2002 into Lynde House, one of Westminster Healthcare's nursing homes in Twickenham, stated that it was dangerously understaffed, ill-equipped and mistreating patients. Poor hygiene and medical care, unexplained bruising on some of the residents' bodies and general disregard for their wellbeing was shown to be commonplace. The findings caused embarrassment to the Government and forced Patel to step down from his position as adviser to the national Older People's Taskforce. He also resigned his Help the Aged role.

The Lynde House affair became a protracted one. Patel was eventually cleared of professional misconduct by the General Medical Council only last month, after he was accused of failing to investigate patient mistreatment at the home properly. To the surprise of relatives of those who suffered at the home, the case was dropped after the High Court found that key evidence was inadmissible.

Despite his enormous wealth - conservative estimates maintain he is worth over £25m - the past few years have taken their toll on Patel's personal life: he and his first wife are divorced. He now lives with Katharine Blackwood, a divorcée and former nurse who controls at least three nursing recruitment companies herself.

Patel remains sensitive to criticism over the difficult line he treads between being a businessman and a doctor. "It is increasingly being recognised that mental health is a huge problem that needs to be treated," he said after the court cleared him. "Mental illness is a bigger reason for unemployment than any other." All of which suggests his spirit to cure people remains strong. A colleague speaks of the pride of Patel's mother, who died last year, at the fact of her son becoming a doctor and his subsequent success. "Being profitable isn't the only thing that gets him up in the morning," he says. But you can be sure he doesn't mind the financial success that has gone with it.