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July 27, 2026
GREEN BAY – Brad Burmeister, ER physician and president of Green Bay Emergency Medical Services, was recently recognized for his commitment to community care and outreach with the inaugural Dr. Julius Bellin Physician of the Year Award.
“I was actually just about to leave my work shift when I saw an unusual gathering of administration outside of the emergency department,” he said. “I [joked] with the nurses, ‘Something must be going on – there are all these important people outside.’”
What Burmeister said he didn’t know was that he was about to be the gathering’s most important person.
“All of a sudden, they all came walking into the emergency department to surprise me, and I tried to run away,” he laughed. “Then they indicated that I received that award.”
Though he served as a community informant during the COVID-19 pandemic, Burmeister said he’s relatively uncomfortable with being in the spotlight.
“I don’t always like attention in front of other people, although, [at that point], I had been on the news a lot,” he said. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, I was on ‘Good Day Wisconsin’ in our region, and actually I think I [did] 300-some interviews total among different media outlets.”
It was this commitment to public safety, combined with years of clinical practice and administrative leadership, that Burmeister said he believes earned him the award in the program’s inaugural year.
“I feel mostly I’m just a normal person who does my job, I work with a great team of people and I don’t know that I do anything particularly that well…, but I try to show up and do things and be engaged,” he said, “I don’t like missing opportunities to improve professionally or improve patient care, experience, costs – all that type of stuff. So, I probably get a little bit more involved with other activities than I probably should.”
Equalizing care and compassion
After completing his emergency medicine residency at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee in 2017, Burmeister said he began working for Bellin – now Emplify Health by Bellin – where he has spent nearly a decade, transitioning into an administrative role about three years ago.
“It is essentially like a managing partner-type role,” he said. “I still maintain a fairly busy clinical practice, [but] I also manage the operational portion of our group.”
Being involved in operations both on the clinical and administrative side, Burmeister said, means he’s collaborating across departments on a daily basis.
“I work with our accounting [team], our legal team, our billing encoders who we contract with to keep the business side of our practice operating, [etc.],” he said. “Then, I’m also like the human resource person – I help with payroll, hiring new individuals and recruiting.”
On top of all that, Burmeister said he is also involved in the strategic planning of the acute-care department, helping determine the future of the health system and improve patient care across the region.
“It’s a fun job,” he said.
As an ER physician, Burmeister said he and his team often encounter people during moments of despair or crisis while managing the ebb and flow of resources within and external to the department.
“It’s what we call ‘acute unscheduled care’ – people don’t have an appointment, they don’t have a reservation [or] time blocked off in the schedule, so we don’t necessarily have a room saved for people in advance,” he said. “[Having] the operational rightsizing to have the staff, the rooms, the space and all the people there to take care of people when we don’t know exactly what the demand is going to be at any given time is always challenging.”
At the same time, Burmeister said ER clinicians have to balance giving patients care and compassion simultaneously in emergent situations.
“My saying is, ‘this is probably the worst day of people’s lives,’” he said.
As one of the primary local resources for the most up-to-date protocols during COVID-19, Burmeister said he always prioritized timely delivery of information to minimize the virus’s regional impact.
“People apparently felt I was a good fit for that role – that people trusted me, because I seemed to be more of a person who was like born and raised locally,” he said. “I was good at giving good advice, too, supposedly.”
The resulting success in offsetting the impact of COVID-19 across Northeast Wisconsin’s health systems, Burmeister said, was encouraging.
“I think scrutinizing the science is part of the scientific process that helps you get toward the right answer, and that all takes time,” he said. “Ultimately, I know there are a lot of folks who have strong opinions in this space, but I think, as a medical community, it really united all of our health systems across the region to help us meet our mission of trying to mitigate the consequences the virus was going to have on our community.”
Burmeister’s decision to put himself on the front lines of public scrutiny during COVID-19, Molly Kleinman – an Emplify physician on the award selection committee – said, took “a lot of bravery.”
“[It] takes a special person to put yourself out there and say, ‘Because of my training, this is what I believe, and this is the medicine,’” she said. “He was really integral in being a public face during the pandemic [regarding] health care, [and] he is still involved in many, many community events.”
Regardless of his demanding clinical schedule, Kleinman said it’s not unusual to spot Burmeister at events around Northeast Wisconsin.
“Just on [a recent] Sunday, my daughter did the Duck Creek Triathlon [in Howard], and he was there working [the event],” she said. “[It was a] Sunday morning at 7 a.m., and at noon, he had to [be] at the emergency department for a 12-hour shift.”
It’s that kind of “selfless” dedication to his community that Kleinman said put Burmeister’s nomination on the award-selection committee’s radar.
“He does a ton of education with students,” she said, “not only medical students, but even people in his department – nurses, other members of his team – and [is] innovative in thinking about how we can do health care better and serve our patients better.”
The expectations of honor
The idea for the Dr. Julius Bellin Physician of the Year award, Kleinman said, came from another current Bellin physician, Cindy Lasteki.
“She really had worked on developing these awards over the last couple of years,” Kleinman said. “This has been a several-year project… [creating] the criterion, the nomination [form] and the award.”
Kleinman said the award may be named in honor of the hospital’s founder, but the qualities of a recipient mirror those of Mark Reinke – “a well-known ear, nose and throat doctor with Bellin who passed away a number of years ago.”
“This award honors the legacy of both of these physicians, Dr. Julius Bellin and Dr. Mark Reinke,” she said. “[Reinke’s] family actually helped us design the award…, made after the ‘Healing Hands’ sculpture, which is a large sculpture [modeled after Reinke’s hands] in front of our surgery center.”
During his time with Bellin, Kleinman said Reinke made a profoundly positive impact not only on his patients’ well-being, but the culture of the hospital system.
“Reinke exemplified the definition of service to patients as well as their community,” she said. “He was a pillar in the community, and that was the main thing we thought about with the nomination form.”
With the award’s selection criteria spanning “overall professionalism, excellence in clinical care, patient advocacy and community service, organizational leadership and dedication to education,” Kleinman said Burmeister’s nomination quickly rose to the top.
“Burmeister embodied all of those,” she said. “He’s an excellent clinician, has been integral in our emergency departments and has really been a huge leader in [terms of] clinical care for the team there, as well as in our system.”
With the award now proudly displayed on his desk, Burmeister said he’s motivated by the recognition to continue his work – helping to improve care for patients in the ER department and beyond.
“Everyone likes to be recognized and I’m really grateful for that,” he said. “I feel like I have a responsibility now to try even harder, because I have to live up to the role and expectations this honor has.”
