Dr. Don Kern joined QCHC in 2014 as its Corporate Medical Director.  He has over 40 years of experience practicing medicine, and over 20 years of experience in correctional medicine. Dr. Kern loves any opportunity to educate and explain correctional medicine to healthcare professionals and lay people. Dr. Kern provides oversight for continuous quality improvement, utilization management, and other clinical matters.  In addition to his management responsibilities, Dr. Kern also continues as site medical director for several clients and participates in the clinical on-call schedule.

Prior to joining QCHC, Dr. Kern was the Medical Director for multiple state prisons in the Massachusetts Department of Corrections; Medical Director of Correctional Health Services for the City of New York; Chief Medical Officer for a large, national correctional healthcare company based in Birmingham, Alabama; and Utilization Management (UM) Medical Director for another large, national correctional healthcare company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Dr. Kern is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and licensed to practice medicine in over 14 states, including Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina, Kentucky, and Georgia. He is a Certified Correctional Health Professional (CCHP) by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC), where he is a past member of the Executive Committee and Board of Directors, is a Senior Physician Surveyor for accreditation audits of correctional facilities and is a frequent speaker and panelist at conferences. Dr. Kern has been an Associate Professor at Boston University, and is currently an Adjunct Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Public Health. He is a member of the American College of Correctional Physicians (formerly Society of Correctional Physicians) (past president), the American College of Physicians, and the American College of Preventive Medicine. Dr. Kern is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars on topics in correctional medicine.

He received his BA in Mathematics and Economics from Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania; his MD from Tufts University School of Medicine in Medford, Massachusetts; served his Residency in Internal Medicine at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska; served Fellowships in Internal Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and in Geriatric Medicine at Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital in Bedford, Massachusetts; and holds a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Boston University School of Public Health.