Steven J. Stack, MD, MBA, FACEP

Dr. Stack was appointed Commissioner by Gov. Andy Beshear in February, 2020 and is a practicing board-certified emergency physician.

For more than 20 years Dr. Stack has been a leader in the medical profession. He has served on boards of directors and in senior leadership roles for numerous geographic and specialty medical societies. In 2006, he became the first emergency physician ever elected to the American Medical Association (AMA) board of trustees, subsequently serving as board chair and in 2015-2016 as the youngest AMA president since 1854.

Dr. Stack has served as medical director of multiple emergency departments, including St. Joseph East-Lexington and St. Joseph-Mt. Sterling in Kentucky, and Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis, Tennessee. He has more than 18 years of emergency medicine administrative and clinical practice experience in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee.

In 2018, Dr. Stack joined The University of Tennessee Haslam College of Business as adjunct professor. In this role, he lectures on healthcare policy and the mechanics of advocacy to physicians in the physician executive MBA program and to both physician and non-physician healthcare leaders enrolled in executive education programs.

Dr. Stack has focused experience in health information technology (IT). A nationally recognized advocate, he bridges bedside care with governmental policy and has served on numerous federal advisory committees for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology from 2010-2016. Additionally, he served from 2012-2016 as board member and secretary of eHealth Initiative, a Washington, DC-based non-profit association improving health care through the advancement of health IT.

His other areas of expertise include emergency department and hospital management, health system reform, physician licensure and regulation, and healthcare anti-trust issues. Dr. Stack has extensive experience in policymaking and advocacy at federal, state, and county levels and before legislative bodies and executive branch regulatory agencies. He also is a skilled public spokesperson and longtime advocate for universal access to affordable and high quality healthcare.

Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Dr. Stack graduated magna cum laude from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he was a Henry Bean Scholar for classical studies. He returned to Ohio to complete medical school and emergency medicine residency at The Ohio State University before moving to Memphis to begin his clinical practice. He completed an MBA at UT Knoxville Haslam College of Business.