Nicholas Stark

MD, MBA

Dr. Stark serves as co–course director for Practice Essentials of Emergency Medicine and is the lead editor for the Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, Legal and Regulatory Issues, Negotiations, EM Informatics, and Leadership and Innovations modules.

He is a board-certified emergency physician working at the intersection of clinical care, administration, and innovation. Dr. Stark works clinically at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and is an associate physician and assistant director of UCSF's Acute Care Innovation Center, where he leads teams through design thinking and rapid cycle optimization processes to create tools that improve patient care.

Dr. Stark also works clinically and serves as the vice chair of emergency medicine, director of operations, and director of quality at Mercy Medical Center Merced, where he is currently reinventing their vertical care system, building processes to streamline hospital admissions, and revitalizing patient experience efforts. Dr. Stark received his medical degree from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and he completed his emergency medicine residency at the UCSF-ZSFG Emergency Medicine Residency Program, where he was chief resident.

Dr. Stark has extensive experience leading health system–wide quality improvement initiatives and has received the National Patient Safety Movement’s Leadership Award. He is passionate about empowering physicians to help shape the future of health care through education and advocacy. In addition to being a founding co–course director for Practice Essentials of Emergency Medicine, he is also the cofounder of the Emergency Medicine Innovation Collaborative, and he serves on several boards and committees.