White Coat to Board Room Part 1

Anne Steckowych, APRN, Brett Murray, MD, Cameron Berg, MD, and Daniel Grossman, MD

on Spotify

The summary below is from an episode of ERcast: Clinical Perspectives

Emergency physicians can extend their impact beyond the bedside by pairing frontline practice with business strategy, innovation, and global health. Maintaining clinical work keeps product decisions grounded in real patient needs, clinician behavior under uncertainty, and the financial realities that shape adoption.

Emergency Medicine Beyond the Bedside

Three-leg career framework: A durable nontraditional career can rest on medicine, business, and global health at the same time rather than forcing a single-lane choice.
Clinical credibility in innovation: Ongoing emergency practice keeps innovation honest by exposing real workflow friction, patient needs, and how clinicians actually make decisions with incomplete data.
Systems-scale impact mindset: The big opportunity is often system design rather than one-patient-at-a-time care, especially in resource-constrained settings where scalability matters most.
Emergency physician skill transfer: Emergency medicine translates unusually well to strategy roles because rapid decisions, uncertainty tolerance, and systems thinking are core to both worlds, and we get into that crossover in the episode.
Dual-career tradeoffs: Working clinical shifts while building business ventures is possible but gets harder over time as travel, family, and leadership demands compete for the same bandwidth.

Building Innovation Inside Large Organizations

Reverse innovation model: Products built for low-resource settings can move upstream into wealthy markets when simplicity, portability, and independence from infrastructure become advantages.
Internal startup realities: Launching a new venture inside a corporation often starts with no team, no budget, and no template, making internal advocacy as important as the idea itself.
Financial sustainability framing: Innovation gains traction faster when framed as a sustainable business rather than philanthropy, especially in organizations built around margin expectations.
Volume versus margin tension: Lower-cost, higher-volume healthcare models can clash with traditional device economics, a practical tension that matters more than most clinicians realize. We walk through that conflict in the episode.
Organizational influence mapping: Driving change in healthcare systems depends on identifying champions, understanding who influences whom, and tailoring the message to each stakeholder group.
Business literacy for clinicians: Clinicians who understand incentives, organizational structure, and where the money flows are better positioned to move good ideas into real adoption.

Subscribe to ERcast: Clinical Perspectives to listen to the episode.

Faculty

Anne Steckowych, APRN
Emergency medicine is in Anne’s blood; her father has been an Emergency Medicine physician for the last 30 years. After earning her nursing degree from the University of New Hampshire (UNH) in 2018, Anne worked as an EMT at her local fire department, gaining practical experience that prepared her for five years as a nurse in the emergency department. She eventually returned to UNH to become an NP and has spent the last 8 years in the same ED, building relationships with a clinical team dedicated to providing the best possible patient care. Outside of the hospital, she’s usually skiing, hiking, or running in the New Hampshire hills. ERcast is her first podcast, and she’s thrilled to be part of the Hippo team.
Brett Murray, MD
Dr. Murray is an Emergency Medicine physician practicing at a busy community trauma center. After attending Boston University School of Medicine, he completed his residency training at Brown University / Rhode Island Hospital, where he also served as Chief Resident from 2020 – 2021. His clinical interests center on medical education, performance science, and Emergency Medical Services.
Cameron Berg, MD
Based in Minneapolis, MN, Dr. Berg focuses on simplifying complex patient care processes, such as chest pain, syncope, and heart failure treatment. Since 2020, he has also been navigating his own recovery from a TBI after a bicycle accident. When he isn't in the clinic, Cameron is usually busy keeping his three young children alive and happy.
Daniel Grossman, MD