Angelo Falcone

Why We Chose Him:

It is difficult to overstate Dr. Angleo Falcone’s devotion to being a frontline CEO. But we will do our best not to understate it. As a top doc in his field for the last several decades, he rose up the ladder quickly from being an emergency physician in one of the busiest emergency departments in Maryland to founding and leading a regional physicians group -- MEP Health -- that cared for 500,000 patients a year in multiple states, to eventually leading a group that was treating 6 million patients a year in the U.S. when that company was integrated into US Acute Solutions. However, incredibly, during the whole time he ran those companies he also acted as an emergency room physician. 

Why did he devote his life to being on the front lines even as he has enjoyed the reigns of running companies? For Dr. Falcone, there were three main reasons, the first of which was that he loved what he was doing, 

“Having trained for so many years to become a physician, it is almost impossible for me to walk away from it,” explained Dr. Falcone a few years back while he was still pulling double duty as a CEO and ER doc. “I still love stepping into a patient’s room, introducing myself as an ER doc, and starting the conversation about what ails them and how I can help them today. There is almost something magical about the interaction to me. It is a privilege to care for patients and I still find great satisfaction in it, period.”

But beyond his own personal gratification, being on the front lines allowed him to see what other leaders could not. He explained how there were things that can only be seen as they are actually happening rather than being reported or chronicled later in a report.

“There is no better way to “ground truth” than to walk in the shoes of a clinician,” explains Falcone. “You get a sense of the health of a company by how it functions under stress, and there are few more stressful environments than a busy emergency department. Sure, the information could be conveyed in a memo or an incident report, but it loses some of its fullness.”

Finally, and maybe most importantly for the focus of this article, it allowed him to earn the respect of those he was leading. “Knowing that your CEO is willing to put a stethoscope around their neck and show up on time for a shift makes a statement unlike any email or policy ever could,” declares Falcone. “This is all not to say that there aren’t trade-offs. There are and they need to be weighed appropriately. I clearly cannot work a full complement of clinical shifts, nor can I work at every one of our locations, which are now spread across three states. That is a reality I had to face as our company grew.”

What that reality meant was, while supporting almost 70 sites in eight states, he was on the road almost every week to meet with teams, senior leadership at hospitals and new groups interested in joining the company, all the while squeezing in his clinical shifts on Fridays and Saturdays. 

He gave up being on the front lines of medicine briefly a few years ago only due to family concerns, before ultimately also stepping down from the leadership role at US Acute Care Solutions. 

Yet, true to form, despite his need and desire to being able to devote more time to his family, he still couldn’t bear the thought of not being on the front lines of medicine for very long, so much so that he started his own smaller practice, Dignity Integrative Health Solutions. 

No doubt his years of being so personally connected to the customer while running a major healthcare company inspired him with the desire and ability to offer a very special level and type of care in his new practice.

“The traditional medical system is good at treating symptoms of disease once they become a problem, but less so at addressing the whole person and root cause,” explains Angelo. “I realized that integrative medicine, and particularly a focus on nutrition, sleep, daily movement, and mental resilience, provided the framework for addressing the root causes of the symptoms of chronic disease.” 

In fact, he was so dedicated to providing that level of care that he went back to school to be able to do so, completing a Fellowship in Integrative Medicine through the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine. 

​“My practice is a partnership,” says Angelo. “I do not have all the answers, but I believe that by respecting each other as whole individuals we can find the right path to individual health, wellness and longevity.”

If that is what front line leadership makes possible, then it’s crucial not just for the employees but the leaders who learn and grow from it.