Leadership
Linda Thomas-Hemak, M.D., FACP, FAAP
President and Chief Executive Officer
About
Linda Thomas-Hemak, M.D., FACP, FAAP, is president and chief executive officer of The Wright Center for Community Health and The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education.
After graduating as a Michael DeBakey Scholar from Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, and completing Harvard’s Combined Internal Medicine/Pediatrics Residency Program in Boston, she joined The Wright Center in 2001, became president in 2007 and CEO in 2012. Concurrent with her responsibilities as an executive, Dr. Thomas-Hemak is also quintuple board-certified in internal medicine, pediatrics, addiction medicine, obesity medicine, and nutrition, and remains a healer at heart. She sees patients at The Wright Center for Community Health’s Mid Valley Practice, treating and caring for multiple generations of families, neighbors and friends. This active and passionate engagement with her primary care patients and perspective as a hands-on medical practitioner, she firmly believes, helps enlighten and empower her executive decision-making.
A founding board member of the Scranton-based Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, Dr. Thomas-Hemak is actively involved in multiple organizations, countless committees and nonprofit boards and workgroups aimed at benefiting the community, generating efficiencies in health care delivery, and promoting primary health care workforce development, both regionally and nationally.
In April 2023, Dr. Thomas-Hemak began her four-year term as governor for the eastern region of the American College of Physicians’ Pennsylvania Chapter (PA-ACP) – the nation’s largest medical-specialty organization. Overall, the American College of Physicians works to enhance the quality and effectiveness of health care by fostering excellence and professionalism in medicine and promoting quality patient care, advocacy, education, and career fulfillment in internal medicine and its subspecialties.
She serves as a member of the Advisory Council on Graduate Medical Education of the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), as well as the Pennsylvania Patient-Centered Medical Home Advisory Council. Dr. Thomas-Hemak is a current governing board member of the Keystone Accountable Care Organization, the Institute of Public Policy and Economic Development, and the Center for Health and Human Services Research and Action. She is an executive committee member and the current chair of the Northeast Area Health Education Center Governing Board, a committee member of the American College of Physicians Northeast PA Council, as well as the treasurer of the American Association of Teaching Health Centers. She also serves on the advisory board of the Health Federation of Philadelphia’s Health Center Controlled Network.
She was instrumental in the creation of The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education’s pioneering National Family Medicine Residency Program, designed to address America’s primary care physician shortage and related health disparities through collaborations with Federally Qualified Health Center partners that serve as learning environments for physician learners.
Additional career highlights include The Wright Center’s 2019 recognition as a Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alike and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA)-designated Level 3 Patient Centered Medical Home with NCQA-recognized School-Based and also Behavioral Health Integration; a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Top 30 Site for National Innovations; a University of California, San Francisco, Center for Excellence in Primary Care and American Association of Medical Colleges’ Premier Primary Care Residency; a Pennsylvania Opioid Use Disorder Center of Excellence, Pennsylvania Coordinated Medication-Assisted Treatment program, and a leading partner in Lackawanna County’s Healthy MOMS program for pregnant women struggling with substance use disorder. Dr. Thomas-Hemak has also led The Wright Center’s engagement in the Keystone Health Information Exchange and is a vocal advocate for health care information interoperability in regards to electronic medical records. Notably, she led the pioneering efforts for the national establishment of the HRSA-funded Graduate Medical Education Safety-Net Consortium, with The Wright Center now serving as the largest Teaching Health Center network in America.
Under Dr. Thomas-Hemak’s leadership, The Wright Center’s Graduate Medical Education Safety-Net Consortiums aspire to be recognized by the President of the United States as THE Health and Human Services gold standard community-based model for primary health care with integrated workforce development by June 30, 2027.
