Gary Bernstein Email & Phone Number

I was asked in 2019 to become the first Regional Medical Officer for the Atlanta and Philadelphia CTCA hospitals. Once again, along with a small team of remarkably talented individuals, we are standing up a national organization that brings together the medical staffs of the five main hospitals and various outpatient clinics that comprise CTCA. Current responsibilities include recruitment, retention, physicians and advanced practitioner contracting, quality, operational and financial efficiency.

My prior surgical assisting company ultimately led me to meet and work with a world class Surgical Oncologist who was eventually recruited to work at a new CTCA hospital being built just South of Atlanta. I also volunteered to go back into full time General Surgery practice. Once again, I found myself working for a startup. I interviewed when the hospital was a concrete slab and some girders. By 2012, I along with an incredibly talented and devoted team of healthcare practitioners had the rather unique opportunity to start an entire hospital from scratch. It has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my entire life.

Along with clinical duties, I was often tapped to accomplish special projects and gained a reputation for completing objectives. I was eventually offered the position of Chief of Surgery. Along with my administrative counterparts, we were responsible for the recruitment, space planning, operational efficiency and staffing of the main OR's as well as associated procedure rooms for the non-surgical proceduralists.

Despite some modest success in the Financial Planning business, surgery ultimately called for me to re-engage. I dipped my toe in the water by starting a surgical assisting company. I and my fellow physicians and PA's supplied assisting services to most of the hospitals in the greater metro Atlanta area and several outpatient surgery centers.

Us

Looking around for something to do after the dot com bubble burst, a colleague invited me to join a small team starting within a larger insurance organization to do financial planning for healthcare related companies. This was a natural fit with my previous business experience, so I obtained all the necessary licenses and certifications and began providing financial planning services to individuals and small businesses including retirement plan advice, life and health insurance, benefits consulting and and some operational improvement consulting.

The late 90's was the height of the dot com boom. After completing my executive MBA, I convinced two classmates to follow my passion of bringing cost effective cost-accounting to doctors' offices using the new thing called the internet. I left my surgery practice to work on this full time. We bootstrapped the software coding. I obtained invaluable experience dealing with lawyers, venture capitalists and angel investors. Sadly, despite the necessity for the industry, we were ultimately caught in the subsequent dot com bust.

Atlanta, Georgia, Us

I started out in practice back when it was common to "hang out a shingle." I was fortunate to be accepted into a call group of General Surgeons at Piedmont Hospital. However, it was ultimately up to me to find office space, design the renovation, obtain a line of credit and ultimately hire staff and open my own office. This was the first "start up" experience that looking back has been a theme my entire life. By my fourth year in practice, two separate call groups combined into a group practice and I became Managing Partner. Again, planning and implementing the combination of seven separate surgical practices into one location.

Master Of Business Administration - Mba, International Business

Doctor Of Medicine - Md, Medicine

Bachelor Of Arts - Ba, Chemistry