Li Ern Chen, MD MS

Market Leader, Physician Workforce Solutions

Dr. Li Ern Chen is one of North America’s leading experts in value-based care, clinical experience, and physician workforce transformation, and a recognized voice in healthcare innovation. 

A surgeon by training, Li Ern brings a rare, frontline perspective to healthcare leadership, using firsthand experience in care delivery to drive meaningful, system-wide change. She is relentlessly committed to advancing the Quintuple Aim - with a particular focus on creating sustainable practice environments that restore meaning and professional fulfillment while improving access, outcomes, cost, and patient experience.

Li Ern guides strategy and innovation to help health systems, hospitals, and academic medical centers design and sustain a holistic approach to their physician workforce — optimizing workforce planning, aligning talent with care, reimbursement, and compensation models, advancing physician leadership development, and fostering a resilient, engaged physician workforce that enables sustainable, scalable, high-quality care delivery.

With over 20 years of hands-on clinical and executive leadership experience across pediatric to geriatric populations in primary to quaternary care settings, Li Ern brings a deep, practical understanding of physician workload, care models, compensation structures, and leadership dynamics. She uniquely bridges clinical credibility with strategic, data-driven insight to help organizations design aligned physician roles, develop leaders, and build engaged, high-performing medical staffs that support long-term quality and sustainability.

Li Ern is a proven leader in value-based care transformation, guiding physicians and organizations from fee-for-service models to sustainable frameworks that better align clinician incentives, performance, and patient outcomes. She has held senior leadership roles optimizing clinical practice and operations in value-based primary care and behavioral health, setting patient safety strategy for a 45-hospital health system, and leading surgical services across a 20-hospital health system. In these roles, she aligned clinical teams with supply chain, IT, and other non-clinical service lines, creating synergies that strengthened workforce sustainability, improved quality and enhanced the frontline care experience.

Li Ern partners with healthcare organizations and industry to redesign care delivery, and address complex physician workforce challenges, including retention, scalability, and operational efficiency. Her work emphasizes collaborative teamwork, integrity, and quality, positioning her as a trusted advisor in physician-led transformation.

Li Ern completed her undergraduate education, medical school, and general surgery training at Washington University in St. Louis and Barnes-Jewish Hospital, followed by a pediatric surgery fellowship at the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin. She earned a Master of Clinical Science degree from the University of Texas Southwestern, further reinforcing her foundation in evidence-based, physician-driven workforce and care delivery innovation.