‘The best ideas come from the front lines’: Why Penn State Health’s CEO still practices medicine

When Michael Kupferman, MD, became CEO of Hershey, Pa.-based Penn State Health in late June 2025, he brought a special background that not all health system executives have: decades of work as a physician. 

Dr. Kupferman began practicing medicine in 1999, and is a trained head and neck surgeon. In his new role, he works with clinical colleagues one to two days monthly while maintaining his CEO responsibilities. 

“It keeps me grounded being able to be part of day-to-day patient care,” Dr. Kupferman told Becker’s. “It’s what I’ve always loved to do. It’s why I became a physician. Even though I don’t get to spend as much time with patients directly, I feel like my role is to empower our caregivers to do their best work so that they can provide exceptional patient care.”

Dr. Kupferman also splits his time across Penn State Health’s hospitals and clinics each week, meeting with colleagues, patients and their families. It’s through these interactions that he is able to more deeply understand any pain points at the system and address them accordingly. 

“The best ideas come from the front lines, [they don’t] come from the C-suite,” he said. “The best initiatives, the most foundational ideas really come from our physicians, our nurses and our team members. They’re the ones who we engage with in this process.”

Along with creating a strong front-line presence with employees, Dr. Kupferman is also leading Penn State Health through an Epic integration to improve clinician and patient experience.

The six-hospital system began implementation of the new EHR in June, and plans to go live with it in the fourth quarter of 2026. 

“Everything’s going quite well,” Dr. Kupferman said. “We are making the hard decisions around systemness, and that’s what the Epic implementation entails. Bringing the broad array of stakeholders together to align around how, for example, our laboratories are going to run, how our imaging centers are going to run, how we’re going to manage our operating rooms and what that patient experience looks like when they check in at the front door.”

Penn State Health is also working to integrate its academic and community physicians into a single unified medical group, further cementing its identity as the only integrated academic health system in the region.

“We cover the entire waterfront,” he said. “The integrated medical group creating systemness is going to enhance that exceptional patient experience, that exceptional patient access that we continue to promise and deliver in this region.”

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