What if one of the biggest leadership skills physicians need was never taught in medical school?

In this episode of PEMBA On Demand, Dr. Norm Chapin speaks with David Maslar, PhD, David McMillan, and Jim Rosenberg about why financial literacy has become essential for physician leaders. The conversation centers on Finance for Physician Leaders, a certificate program offered through the University of Tennessee Haslam College of Business in collaboration with PYA.

The episode begins with a question many physicians can relate to: after years of medical training, how many were ever formally taught how to read a financial statement, evaluate a contract, or understand the business implications of private equity in healthcare? Dr. Chapin notes that many clinicians are expected to navigate the financial side of medicine without ever receiving structured training in it.

David Maslar shares how his academic path led him into finance education and teaching. He serves as Academic Director of the Full-Time MBA program at Haslam College of Business, and his background includes graduate training in finance, economics, and applied mathematics. His official Haslam profile confirms his role with the Full-Time MBA program and his University of Missouri PhD background.

David McMillan discusses how his career evolved from financial statement auditing into healthcare consulting and advisory work. He explains how early work with hospitals and health systems led him into strategy modeling, transactions, valuation, compensation design, and other financial advisory areas. PYA confirms that McMillan serves as the firm’s President and has more than 30 years of advisory and consulting experience.

Jim Rosenberg brings the conversation back to the relationship between mission and financial sustainability. His Haslam profile describes his work with purpose-driven leaders and his role designing and delivering executive education programs for healthcare leaders. In the episode, he emphasizes that strong clinical care and financial sustainability do not have to be opposing forces. Instead, sustainable financial decisions can help organizations continue serving patients and communities over time.

The discussion explores why the gap between clinical training and financial knowledge matters more now than ever. The guests explain that healthcare has become more complex, with shifting reimbursement models, value-based care, private equity involvement, physician compensation questions, and organizational financial pressures. Physicians increasingly need enough financial vocabulary and context to participate meaningfully in leadership conversations.

A major theme of the episode is that the goal of finance education for physicians is not to turn doctors into accountants. Instead, the goal is to help physician leaders understand the “story behind the numbers” so they can ask better questions, evaluate tradeoffs, and communicate more effectively with CFOs, executives, boards, and practice leaders.

The guests also explain how the course is designed. Rather than offering a generic MBA finance class, the program uses healthcare-focused examples, live discussion, cases, small-group breakouts, and practical applications that physicians can bring back to their own organizations. The course begins with foundational financial vocabulary and then connects those concepts to real operational and clinical decisions.The episode also highlights the diversity of physicians drawn to the program. Participants include physicians from private practice, academic health systems, administrative roles, nonprofit organizations, for-profit organizations, and private equity-owned settings. This range reflects how broadly financial knowledge now applies across modern physician leadership.

By the end of the conversation, each guest shares what they hope physicians take away from the course: c...

What if one of the most important moments in healthcare happens after a patient leaves the hospital?

In this episode of PEMBA On Demand, Dr. Norman Chapin sits down with Dr. Tiffany Hanf, Regional Medical Director for Post-Acute Care at TeamHealth and current PEMBA student, to discuss one of healthcare’s most persistent and costly challenges: helping patients successfully transition from the hospital to post-acute care while reducing preventable readmissions.

Dr. Hanf oversees post-acute care operations across nine western states and shares insights from her work leading skilled nursing facilities, long-term care facilities, and rehabilitation programs. At the center of the conversation is her work on an acute-to-post-acute transition program designed to improve coordination, communication, and continuity of care between hospitals and post-acute providers.

She explains that one of the biggest barriers to successful transitions is the fragmentation that often exists between hospitals and post-acute facilities. Because these organizations are frequently managed by separate entities, critical information can be lost during the handoff process. Effective discharge summaries, medication coordination, and timely communication are essential to ensuring patients receive seamless care after leaving the hospital.

The discussion explores how the role of physicians in post-acute care has evolved significantly over the years. Dr. Hanf explains that modern post-acute medicine requires dedicated physician leadership, advanced practice clinicians, structured rounding models, and specialty support services. The traditional model of infrequent physician visits to nursing facilities has largely been replaced by a more proactive, team-based approach focused on quality outcomes and reducing unnecessary hospitalizations.

Dr. Hanf also shares lessons from a collaborative initiative with a health system seeking to address long hospital stays, discharge bottlenecks, and readmissions. Through coordinated partnerships and standardized workflows, her team has demonstrated improvements in transitions of care, reductions in readmissions, and shorter hospital lengths of stay. However, she notes that meaningful change often requires overcoming organizational silos and building trust among multiple stakeholders.

A significant portion of the conversation focuses on readmissions from post-acute care settings. Dr. Hanf explains that many readmissions are driven by factors such as infections, sepsis, congestive heart failure exacerbations, falls, inadequate access to diagnostics, staffing challenges, and patient or family decisions to seek emergency care. She emphasizes that successful programs focus on identifying these drivers early and creating systems that allow patients to safely remain in the most appropriate care setting whenever possible.

The episode also highlights TeamHealth’s philosophy that clinicians are the organization’s primary customer. Dr. Hanf discusses how supporting physicians and advanced practice clinicians through strong workflows, technology, communication systems, and leadership ultimately improves facility performance and patient outcomes. This clinician-first approach has become a key part of TeamHealth’s strategy for recruitment, retention, and quality improvement.

Later in the conversation, Dr. Hanf reflects on her own career journey. After spending more than a decade as a hospitalist, she transitioned fully into post-acute care, drawn by the opportunity to build deeper relationships with patients while maintaining a sustainable work-life balance. She describes post-acute medicine as a unique blend of acute care complexity and long-term patient continuity.

Finally, Dr. Hanf shares why she chose to pursue the Physician Executive MBA at this stage of her career. Encouraged by colleagues and mentors, she viewed the program as an opportun...

What if the biggest problem in lung cancer is not treatment, but that patients are diagnosed too late?

In this episode of PEMBA On Demand, Dr. Norman A. Chapin speaks with Dr. J. Robert Headrick, Chief of Thoracic Surgery at CHI Memorial Rees Skillern Cancer Institute, about physician leadership, innovation, and transforming how we approach lung cancer and preventive healthcare.

Dr. Headrick shares how his journey evolved from traditional surgical practice into a mission-driven focus on early detection, access, and system redesign in lung cancer care. He explains that one of the biggest problems in healthcare today is not a lack of treatment options, but the fact that patients are often diagnosed too late, when symptoms finally appear.

The conversation highlights how lung cancer has long been misunderstood as primarily a smoking-related disease, when in reality, many patients, including non-smokers, are affected, and outcomes improve significantly when cancer is detected early.

A central focus of the episode is Dr. Headrick’s work in developing mobile CT screening programs, including a bus-based model designed to bring low-dose CT scans directly into communities. He explains that traditional healthcare delivery creates barriers such as time, access, and inconvenience, which prevent many eligible patients from getting screened. By contrast, simplifying access to a quick, minutes-long scan dramatically increases participation.

Dr. Headrick shares real-world examples of how this approach is changing outcomes, including communities where people are now living with early-stage lung cancer who would not have been diagnosed otherwise. These success stories demonstrate how visibility, convenience, and trust can shift public perception and engagement with preventive care.

The discussion also explores the operational and scalability challenges of this model. While mobile screening improves access, it introduces new complexities such as:

• Managing large volumes of imaging data
• Coordinating follow-up care
• Ensuring patients return for repeat scans
• Avoiding strain on radiology resources

Dr. Headrick explains that these challenges are driving the need for new solutions powered by artificial intelligence, particularly in imaging interpretation and workflow efficiency. AI has the potential to significantly reduce the time required to review scans and help identify early disease patterns more quickly.

A major theme of the episode is the shift from reactive healthcare to proactive care. Dr. Headrick emphasizes that relying on symptoms to guide care is fundamentally flawed, especially for conditions like lung cancer and heart disease, which often remain silent until advanced stages.

He outlines a broader vision for the future of healthcare that includes:

• Earlier and more accessible screening
• Lower-cost, high-efficiency diagnostic tools
• Integration of AI to support clinical decision-making
• Empowering patients to engage in their own health earlier in life

Dr. Headrick also discusses how his experience in the Physician Executive MBA (PEMBA) program helped him transition from thinking as an individual clinician to thinking at a systems level, including business planning, financial modeling, and leadership strategy. This shift enabled him to bring innovative ideas into real-world implementation.

The episode concludes with a powerful perspective on healthcare economics. Dr. Headrick references projections suggesting that moving toward proactive, preventive care could significantly reduce national healthcare spending, while improving patient outcomes and quality of life.

Ultimately, this conversation highlights how physician leadership, combined with innovation and system-level t...