ABOUT THE FOUNDER.

Dr. Bertini's first career plan was to become a park ranger.

He grew up in Chicago and spent endless summers with his family in the woods of Wisconsin. He studied biology at Loyola University Chicago and developed a love of solo backpacking that has taken him across the United States. Then, at nineteen, seeking money for textbooks, he took a hospital job.

On December 13, 1993, he started his career as a unit secretary in a busy emergency department. On that day, he caught the healthcare bug and kept seeking more clinical responsibility. Over the years, he has worked as a patient care technician, neuropsychological testing technician, ER, ICU, CVICU, and trauma nurse, nurse leader, agency nurse, and travel nurse before becoming a physician. His career has included medical missions, published research, urgent care, and hospital medicine. He is an owner and partner in a private hospitalist group.

His outdoor life continued alongside his clinical work; friends began asking what medical supplies they should carry on their adventures. During medical school and residency, those conversations developed into a love of mission medicine and a deep interest in humanitarian work, disaster relief, and wilderness medicine.

"...In the sweltering heat of a mosquito-filled swamp..."

After residency, building the hospitalist group and family life took priority. Then, in 2022, he learned about a class held in Arkansas at a place called Direct Action Resource Center (a place he still visits every chance he gets). There, in the sweltering heat of a mosquito-filled swamp, his woodsy background, work ethic, and decades of medical training all coalesced, and the idea for AMC took shape.

He wanted to bring the clinical judgment, preparation, and reliability of hospital medicine to people operating far from a hospital. He was shocked to find out there was no formal, physician-led medical group dedicated to medical preparedness and operational medicine. So he built one.

Dr. Bertini has practiced in small critical access hospitals, community hospitals, major university hospitals, mud huts, and ditches. Across those settings, one conviction has held: patients depend on the whole team. Having worked so many hospital jobs himself, he knows that the people whose names rarely appear on doors or in hospital accolades still play an essential role in a patient's care. He would say the MOST essential. Leadership, to him, means respecting the Team, caring for the Team, and holding himself to the same expectations he sets for the Team.

His advice to colleagues is the same advice he shared when reflecting on his years in medicine:

"Be kind, be available, be excellent, and above all else be nice to your nurses."

Matthew J. Bertini, MD

Dr. Bertini looks forward to continuing on his healthcare journey and will tell you he has only just begun to "figure it out."