Surgery, intensive care, obstetrics, pediatrics, every subspecialty, the laboratory, radiology, even dialysis: every part of the hospital converges in the emergency department, and so does every strength and failure of the healthcare system. Staffing issues, payment systems, technology deficits, and policy decisions made elsewhere are amplified when care is most critical.
Administrators, nurses, and physicians each bring competing demands, all within tight budgets. Running a safe department means resolving those conflicts every day while keeping the patient's interests first. Those years, and the roles that followed, gave me four vantage points on the system.
Clinical
How care is delivered
Emergency medicine training and early practice in Chicago, 1999 to 2008, in every hospital setting from community hospitals to Level I trauma centers
Two decades at the bedside show me what clinicians will adopt and what they will work around.
Administrative
How care is run
Medical director of the emergency department and wound care clinics at Northwest Medical Center in Bentonville, and of local plasma centers, 2008 to 2023
Leading clinical operations and supervising clinician teams across multiple states taught me the staffing, quality, and budget realities that decide whether a product fits.
Payer
How care is paid for
Medical director, Optum at Home, 2023 to 2025, later overseeing the program across Kansas and Arkansas
Population-level care for the highest-risk patients put me in the insurer's shoes. It showed me how payers weigh cost, risk, and value, and how better care delivered at home lowers total cost by reducing avoidable utilization.
Legislative
How the rules are made
Free to Care
I helped organize and facilitate a national physician consortium that showed legislators at the Library of Congress the math behind high healthcare costs, and supported the team behind a white paper on reducing those costs.
- Education
- Doctor of Medicine, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock. Undergraduate studies at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana.
- Membership
- American College of Emergency Physicians
- Mentoring
- Physician mentor, Fuel Accelerator, since 2023
- Teaching
- Adjunct faculty, Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, beginning fall 2026, teaching clinical skills to tomorrow's doctors
