Becker’s Healthcare Podcast Matt Boles, MD, MHA, MSc, Chief Medical Officer at Salem Health Hospitals and Clinics
Feb 23, 2026
Matt Boles, MD, MHA, MSc — longtime anesthesiologist and chief medical officer at Salem Health. He discusses converting anesthesia to an employed model, boosting procedural capacity without new ORs, using Lean and Epic traffic control, engaging clinicians for cultural change, and priorities for 2026 like payer pressure, virtual nursing, and APP integration.
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Lifelong Local Clinician Turned CMO
- Matt Boles started at Salem Health at 18 and returned after training, building a 35-year career that culminated in becoming CMO.
- Salem Health is Oregon's largest acute care hospital, a level II trauma center with ~650 licensed beds and no residency programs.
Three Year Journey To Employ Anesthesia Group
- Salem Health transitioned an independent anesthesia group into an employed model over three years to preserve the service line.
- Nearly the entire group chose to stay, showing cultural alignment and intensive one-on-one conversations to address autonomy concerns.
Fix Upstream Flow Instead Of Building More ORs
- Salem Health avoided building new ORs by mapping the full procedural value stream from clinic referral to OR and optimizing upstream bottlenecks.
- They built a 'procedural traffic control' in Epic and introduced a case classification window to target scheduling within 45 days, raising compliance to ~67–68%.