When MGMA called with the news, Dave Gans’ first words captured both his humility and his humanity: “I’m overwhelmed.”  

He had just learned that he would receive MGMA’s 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, an honor he never expected and one he accepted with characteristic grace.  

“It’s humbling, it’s meaningful, [and I’m] especially honored to receive the award as an MGMA staff member,” he said, adding that he has long admired the healthcare leaders who earned the distinction before him.  

Gans’ path to MGMA began with service and serendipity. After 10 years of active duty in the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps, he and his wife decided it was time for graduate school. He left active duty, remained in the Army Reserve for a parallel 31-year career, and ultimately retired as a colonel in December 2000 — experience that sharpened his understanding of how to organize people, resources, and systems for reliable care.  

A faculty mentor soon pointed him to “a small organization” on Denver’s South Colorado Boulevard. In June 1979, he joined MGMA as a graduate intern, attended his first Annual Conference in San Francisco at his own expense, and was hooked.  

What followed is a defining chapter in the profession’s history: the evolution of MGMA’s data enterprise and, with it, a new discipline for decision-making in medical group leadership. Early on, Gans was handed a stack of paper surveys — completed responses from academic practices that “the organization … didn’t know what to do with.” He keyed the data into punch cards, ran the analysis on a mainframe, wrote the report, and proved the concept: if you collect the right information and interpret it clearly, leaders can act with confidence.  

That pattern repeated as he managed a W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant to develop a capitation financial handbook and then brought MGMA’s surveys fully in-house.  

From those beginnings came the benchmarking canon many of today’s administrators take for granted: physician compensation and production, management compensation, cost and revenue, and “what differentiates some practices from others who may be in the same environment … but have different results.”  

As Gans often summarized it, “Good data yields good decisions,” and the first step is knowing “how your practice compares to its peers” and how your own trend line is moving over time. He co-authored MGMA’s benchmarking book to codify that method and then kept refining the tools year after year.  

Benchmarking only matters if it leads to change. Gans likes to point to a Salt Lake City group that faced a crisis, used MGMA data to do a candid internal assessment, studied success stories as a multidisciplinary team, and modeled changes together.  

“In a year’s time, we made progress. In two years’ time, we were among the best.” That arc — facts to insight to action to results — has echoed across countless MGMA member stories over the decades.  

If the data offered the “what,” Gans also supplied the “why.” He became MGMA’s unofficial historian, a role born of curiosity and tenure, mapping the happenings since 22 clinic managers met in 1926 in Madison, Wisconsin.  

That makes the 2025 Leaders Conference the association’s 99th year, a milestone Gans can describe in the first person: he joined in 1979 and has personally known many of the leaders who shaped the field.  

“We need to celebrate what we do have,” he added. “We have a great history in the organization.”  

For all the institutional memory, Gans’ advice to current leaders is relentlessly forward-looking.  

“Healthcare is changing … faster than ever,” he said. Old problems are being solved in new ways — and new ones are emerging just as quickly. “We cannot solve tomorrow’s problems with today’s response,” he emphasized.  

One of the key elements of benchmarking, in his view, is learning how adjacent industries are solving similar constraints and which solutions translate to medical practice.  

“Technologies like AI have the potential to reduce costs, improve patient service, and enhance outcomes only if we apply them in the appropriate way.” That caveat matters; the point of group practice, Gans reminds us, is unchanged: “They’re to provide high-quality care and focus on the needs of the patient.”  

Because mission drifts when systems do, Gans elevates the administrator’s role as a caretaker of the whole.  

“Practice administrators [have] the critical role of managing systems … to optimize patient care,” including a safe working environment for staff and an approach that recognizes and rewards provider contribution. Excellence for patients and a stable, supportive workplace for teams are parallel obligations — and both are measurable.  

Those beliefs are amplified by the breadth of his service. Beyond his work at MGMA, Gans is a member of the board of directors for the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care — perspective that, combined with decades of speaking and writing, keeps his antenna tuned to what works across organizations and geographies.  

His influence at MGMA extends well past retirement. “I no longer work because I’m not getting paid,” he joked, “that doesn’t mean I’m still not… assisting the organization [to] fulfill its goals.” He continues to pen the Data Mine column in MGMA Connection magazine and remains a resource to colleagues and members alike.  

Ask almost anyone at MGMA about Gans and they’ll mention the mentoring as quickly as the metrics. The story repeats: a newer colleague shadowing him before a big presentation; Gans patiently walking a co-presenter through slides; or answering yet another knotty email long after business hours. Why devote that time?  

“Helping others and witnessing their success has been one of the most rewarding aspects of … the career,” he said. “I’ve never considered myself too busy to help someone, even though it meant extending my workday.”  

Over time, the reciprocity he experienced confirmed what he believes about MGMA at its best: it’s “a collaborative and reciprocal organization … what you give comes back to you.”  

Even his take on professional development doubles as operating philosophy. Exposure to other settings, he argues, is essential: “We don’t work in isolation … you need to get exposure to what others are doing,” then share interpretations and compare notes. That habit of looking outward — on boards, at conferences, among peer communities — makes you better at looking inward in your own practice.  

The personal moments in Gans’ story add even more texture to the recognition. On the podcast, he paused to remember his late wife, Joan — “my greatest supporter.” They were married 49 years before she passed away four years ago. Accepting the award, he said, is tinged with the sadness that she is not here to share the moment, tempered by the certainty that “she would’ve been so proud.”  

There’s also the unhurried perspective of a long-distance cyclist.  

“I’ve always felt that the best way to experience a country is from the perspective of a bicycle seat. The pace is appropriate,” he said, noting that his recent 14-day ride from Copenhagen to Oslo would be his 27th cycling trip in Europe. It’s a fitting metaphor for how he has approached the profession: move steadily, look closely, and stop to appreciate what matters.  

Gans’ career is also a case study in curiosity evolving into capability. He didn’t arrive at MGMA as “the data guy.” He became one by doing the work, starting with those keypunch cards and growing into department leadership as MGMA’s data solutions expanded.  

Along the way he helped the field answer bigger questions — about productivity and compensation, staffing and access, costs and revenue — by insisting on the discipline to measure the right things, compare fairly, and act decisively. The method isn’t flashy; it’s rigorous. And it’s why so many practices have carved a path from problem to progress with MGMA in hand.  

He also never stops turning insight into a usable nudge. When asked what today’s practice leaders should do amid mounting pressure — labor shortages, higher costs, lower payments — he didn’t minimize the headwinds.  

“This is a crisis,” he said plainly. The right move, in his view, is to look beyond the familiar playbook, borrow smart ideas from outside healthcare, and run rapid tests. And yes, explore the new tools with purpose.  

“Technologies like AI have the potential to reduce costs, improve patient service, and enhance outcomes only if we apply them in the appropriate way.” That, paired with vigilance about why we’re here — “to provide high-quality care and focus on the needs of the patient” — is how leaders steer in turbulence.  

It’s not lost on Gans that he has spent nearly half of MGMA’s life helping to shape its voice. Fittingly, MGMA will honor Dave Gans during the 2025 MGMA Leaders Conference in Orlando on Monday, Sept. 29. Expect him to deflect the spotlight to the community, as always, and to find a way to turn even an award into a teaching moment.  

As he said of the recognition, he is “overwhelmed … and joyful,” and still eager to keep contributing.  

Dave has always combined the heart of a teacher with the rigor of a data scientist and the steadiness of a field commander — a rare blend that medical practice leaders rely on when the stakes are high. The Lifetime Achievement Award doesn’t close that story so much as it adds a chapter heading. The work continues, and Dave Gans, as ever, is ready to help.  

Resources

• MGMA Awards
• MGMA Consulting
• MGMA Playbooks – Explore MGMA member-benefit guides to all your practice management issues.
• MGMA Leaders Conference 2025 – There's still time! Join peers, policy experts, and practice leaders in Orlando, September 28–October 1, to collaborate on the future of medical group management. Register now.