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Code Blue to Bottom Line: Balancing the ER and Entrepreneurship | Mike Cetta

May 28th, 2025

Ready to scale your business and make a real impact? Discover how a healthcare leader built a massive company and is now disrupting medical technology!

Michael Cetta, a physician and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in emergency medicine, shares his journey from leading MEP, an emergency medicine group that grew to 10 locations and 300 clinicians, to merging with US Acute Care Solutions. He discusses the strategies used during the exit process, the importance of partner alignment, and the balance between clinical practice and business leadership.   

Michael also reveals creative, albeit unconventional, business development tactics for getting in front of hospital CEOs. He emphasizes the power of building relationships and word-of-mouth referrals, particularly in the healthcare industry.   

The conversation shifts to Michael’s latest venture, Crimson Scientific, a company aiming to revolutionize EKG technology, which he was inspired to start after a personal tragedy. Michael also touches upon the lessons learned from his previous entrepreneurial experiences and the surprising similarities between being an ER doctor and an entrepreneur.   

Takeaways:

  • Prioritize Partner Alignment and Character: When building a partnership or team, focus on bringing in individuals who share the same vision, priorities, and character. Strong relationships and alignment among partners can lay an excellent foundation for success and smoother transactions.   
  • Explore All Strategic Alternatives: Before making a major decision like a merger or acquisition, thoroughly research and consider all possible alternatives, such as being an M&A leader, merging with other local groups, or remaining independent. Evaluate the pros and cons of each option.   
  • Balance Economic Goals with Principle: When considering lucrative opportunities like acquisitions, weigh the purely economic benefits against your principles and long-term vision for the company and its ownership structure. Maintaining some equity in a new entity can be more valuable than a full cash exit if continued ownership and growth are priorities.   
  • Build Relationships Through a “Ground Game”: For business development, especially in industries like healthcare, prioritize building genuine relationships through personal interactions and networking at conferences. This “good old fashioned ground game” and earning word-of-mouth referrals from satisfied clients is often more effective than expensive marketing gimmicks.   
  • Leverage Outsourced Expertise Strategically: Recognize when your internal team, even if highly skilled in the core business, needs support in specialized areas like finance, HR, and contracting. Partnering with an external company that feels like an integrated part of your organization can provide essential foundational support for growth.   
  • Embrace Calculated Risk-Taking: While medicine discourages risk for obvious reasons, in business, the ability to trust your instinct, take calculated risks, and pursue opportunities with confidence is crucial for growth. Be willing to commit to a path but also be prepared to pivot if necessary.   
  • Apply Problem-Solving Skills Across Domains: The skills developed in one demanding field, like emergency medicine with its need for quick, definitive action under constraints with a team, can be highly transferable to entrepreneurship. The ability to work towards a goal with limited resources and a team is valuable in both scenarios.

Quote of the Show:

  • “As an ER doc, you’re presented with a problem in front of you. There’s a finite number of resources you have to tap into and a timeline that you have to accomplish, either stabilize the patient or send them to the next level of care. So you have to work with a team, quickly, definitively, within certain guidelines, and get to a goal. And that’s very much how entrepreneurship works. You have constraints, you have a goal, you need to get everyone aligned and pointed in the same direction.”

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