The fact is, I am a professional beggar who loves to connect others and to facilitate at scale. That is what I do best. I’ve spent a lifetime being fascinated by and searching for “genius” and then begging those people to allow me to stand next to them long enough so that I could better understand how they think, what’s important to them, and why. From there, I have tried my best to deliver what they need and to then keep asking these geniuses what they need, and then repeating the cycle. It’s only because of these patient and generous geniuses that I have been able to have such an incredible journey.
Michael Gagnon earned his MBA in 1992 and held leadership roles working with faculty, faculty practice plans, and hospital senior management within the country’s most respected academic medical centers at Harvard and Duke.
Michael was proud to help establish the Division of Orthopaedic Surgery as a stand-alone Department at Duke University. As Founding Chief Administrative Officer, he recruited the administrative team, led the largest expansion of its faculty since inception, developed department budgets, established and managed its payroll systems, and designed an academic faculty compensation plan modeled on financial algorithms that were self-sustaining and helped the Department run in the black for all years of his term as CAO.
During his tenure, the orthopaedic clinical enterprise grew from 15 to 75+ faculty and 50 advanced practice providers, doubling OR and clinic volumes across new markets while increasing MD compensation by 120%. Recognized for these accomplishments, Michael was awarded Emeritus status when he retired early to run the AOC full-time and became the first non-orthopaedic surgeon inducted into Duke Orthopedics’ Piedmont Society.
He lectured at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and was an invited speaker at national meetings of the American Orthopaedic Association (AOA) and the Eastern Orthopaedic Association (EOA), as an expert in topics of negotiation, clinical productivity, and faculty compensation plans. He is published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.
In 2005, Michael founded the Academic Orthopaedic Consortium (AOC), which connects over 5,000 members across 280+ academic orthopaedic departments, health systems, and large musculoskeletal practices. The AOC is rated as the #1 organization in the academic orthopaedic space and is the largest community of academic orthopaedic leaders in the United States. All members are digitally connected within a pure ecosystem, providing immediate peer connection, scaled best practice sharing, and opportunity. Over 96% of Chairs and Executives rate the annual AOC Business & Leadership Symposium an “A” or “A-.”
In November 2020, Michael launched JobsInOrtho, a groundbreaking digital platform connecting orthopaedic residents and fellows across 200 universities with 300 employers, using advanced technology that aggregates orthopaedic surgeon jobs in one central space. Within days of its launch, it became the #1 orthopaedic job board in the U.S., streamlining national recruitment and significantly reducing costs and manual efforts.
He is leading national efforts with AOC Chairs and some of the largest companies in the world to improve the way MedTech/AI/Pharma and academic medical centers (AMCs) collaborate to evaluate, validate, and educate around new technology. Through visionary leadership, innovative thinking, and a commitment to fostering excellence, Michael Gagnon has profoundly impacted the landscape of academic orthopaedics and healthcare administration.