Doc’s startup has ‘rocket ship’ success, leads to major Terre Haute project
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When the bell rings at the end of engineering class at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, students will be able to walk next door to see a real-life hip or knee replacement surgery. The vision to add an outpatient surgical clinic to the university’s planned Innovation Grove District belongs to Dr. R. Michael Meneghini. A prominent orthopedic surgeon who grew up in Terre Haute and graduated from Rose-Hulman, Meneghini has also engineered his own entrepreneurial story rooted in the Wabash Valley.
While the Indiana Joint Replacement Institute’s clinic will be just one piece of the larger entrepreneurial district, the surgical center elevates the engineering-meets-medicine project—a match that also inspired Meneghini’s career path. Add the moxie that he inherited from this mother, and Meneghini has the traits of a bold innovator.
“My mom grew up in the very, very poor section of Terre Haute,” says Meneghini. “She felt the only way to get out of that unfortunate financial situation was to educate yourself, so school was a huge push for me from her. I had no choice but to focus on education and striving; she made sure of that.”
Meneghini recalls his mother doing anything necessary to earn her first teaching job.
Meneghini recalls his mother, who was single around the time he began elementary school, working two jobs while earning her master’s degree. He too would soar in higher education; Meneghini earned an engineering degree from Rose-Hulman, which was just one mile from his childhood home, followed by a medical degree from Indiana University School of Medicine and a fellowship in complex hip and knee replacement at the Mayo Clinic.
After a decade working in a large health system where he felt pressure to “fall in line,” his passion to “aggressively innovate” was suffocating.
“It goes back to my mother again,” chuckles Meneghini. “I was raised that if you don’t like the plot that you’re in, you have two options: either change it or suck it up and endure it. But you don’t gripe about it.”
Noting that doctors are craving “more individuality” amid health care consolidation, Meneghini left the large health system with two options on the table: accept an offer from the Mayo Clinic—“my alma mater and the best hospital system in the world”—to run its hip and knee replacement program, or “take a big leap…and start something from nothing and try to build it.”
Meneghini made the gutsy move, and as the sole surgeon and just five of his colleagues, he formed the Indiana Joint Replacement Institute in 2022 in his hometown of Terre Haute.
“It was just us. We took the leap, formed the business, and the rest has been like a rocket ship,” says Meneghini. “To start an orthopedic practice from nothing in this modern era is almost unheard of; no one is doing it in the U.S. that I’m aware of. We know what we’re doing is pretty unique.”
In about two years, the practice has exploded to more than 20 surgeons and providers, expanded to Fort Wayne, and opened a flagship location in Noblesville just days ago.
Meneghini says one factor fueling IJRI’s rapid growth is allowing doctors “to just get back to being physicians and treating patients.”
With numerous patents in orthopedic technology, Meneghini’s engineering skills have remained central in his career. His passion for merging medicine and engineering led to “a perfect storm” idea for Rose-Hulman’s planned Innovation Grove District, an entrepreneurial district focused on education and health care. He took his next bold business proposal to the university’s president, Robert Coons.
“I said, ‘Would you ever think about letting us put our [outpatient surgery center] at Innovation Grove, you put an engineering building right next to it, and we connect them,” says Meneghini. “The students are working on a project, or in class learning about hip and knee replacement materials, and they can literally walk over and see a surgery.”
The university agreed with what Meneghini calls “the perfect idea for collaboration.” The 40,000 square-foot IJRI surgical center is “set up to be one of the most exciting and successful in the Midwest,” says Steve Holman, CEO of Terre Haute-based Union Health, which is partnering on the project.
Meneghini explains why Terre Haute is a sweet spot for treating patients in the Wabash Valley.
“If more students in the Hoosier state learn more about engineering and medicine together and excel at a really high level, I’d be thrilled; that’d be the best possible outcome,” says Meneghini. “There’s also the economic impact. There are certain communities in Indiana that have struggled economically, and they need an influx of economic growth, job generation and opportunity. I’m excited about what we’re building [in Terre Haute].”
Meneghini’s mother passed away from Alzheimer’s disease before he took the leap as an entrepreneur, but his vision for Rose-Hulman is evidence that he inherited her high esteem for education.
“It’s bittersweet,” he says. “I wish my mom could see it.”
From a child who grew up less than a mile from Rose-Hulman, to alumnus, and now Innovation Grove visionary, Meneghini’s past is helping engineer the future of his hometown.