Team Spotlight:
David Komasara, DO, FACEP, ACOEP
Emergency Care Partners (ECP) and Lake Emergency Partners (LEP) are honored to recognize Dr. David Komasara, DO, FACEP, ACOEP, for his exceptional leadership and dedication to practicing emergency medicine. Throughout his distinguished career, Dr. Komasara has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to clinical excellence and medical education and has consistently supported his team and patients when it mattered most.
A seasoned leader and educator, Dr. Komasara graduated from Albion College with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology and received his medical degree from the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine. Beginning with an Emergency Medicine residency at Mount Carmel Mercy Hospital, his career has reflected both administrative and academic distinction, leading to his current leadership role as Medical Director of the Insight Coldwater Emergency Department.
Clinical Leadership Experience in Emergency Medicine
For over three decades, Dr. Komasara has built a distinguished career as an attending emergency physician, medical director, and academic professor. He is dual board-certified and a Fellow of the American Board of Emergency Medicine. Throughout his tenure, he has been a driving force in advancing clinical quality and fostering physician-hospital alignment. This leadership is grounded by his extensive experience at Garden City Hospital in Michigan, where he served as both Chairman and Vice-Chairman of Emergency Medicine, as well as Chairman of the Clinical Quality Review Committee. His administrative expertise further extends to community-wide emergency services, having previously served as the Medical Director for the Calhoun County, Michigan Medical Control Authority.
Beyond his departmental leadership, Dr. Komasara’s influence reaches deeply into the academic, athletic, and educational realms. He has shared his expertise as a Clinical Assistant Professor at both Michigan State University and Wayne State University and has spent years navigating the intersection of emergency services and sports medicine as the longtime Team Physician for the Plymouth Whalers hockey team. As a recognized authority in medical education and emergency ultrasound, he has directed numerous ultrasound review courses and lent his expertise to the Education Committee for the Michigan College of Emergency Physicians for over a decade. These varied experiences provide Dr. Komasara with a unique perspective on managing medical teams and innovating clinical care.
Interview with Dr. Komasara
Q: When did you decide to become a physician?
I was always interested in medicine, even as a kid. My father was a family physician in the Detroit area. I would hang out in his office a couple times a month and ask lots of questions. I also played the piano/keyboards and wrote music. It was a struggle to choose between medicine or music for a while until my mother yelled at me when I was in college! She told me I could always play music but may not always have the opportunity to go to medical school….so I chose medicine.
Q: What is your favorite part about working with LEP and ECP?
I’m still fairly new to this group but what I appreciate the most is the support from the entire organization, as well as the comradery. I really enjoyed my time in Florida, getting to meet everyone and participating in the Medical Leadership Meeting.
Q: What do you find most exciting about your job?
There are so many aspects of emergency medicine that keep me coming back to work! I love the way our ED staff works together…. giving input, helping each other out…all for the benefit of our patients. Successful resuscitations are always exciting but what I really enjoy are the medical mystery cases where you have a few clues but have to think how to put it all together. Give me a good hyperkalemia with severe EKG changes that immediately responds to calcium or a blue lipped kid with methemoglobinemia!!
Q: What do you like to do outside of work?
My wife and I live on a farm where we raise Dexter cattle for grassfed beef. We also keep bees for honey, grow hops for a couple of local breweries and spend time in the woods with our dogs’ forging mushrooms, ramps, and other treasures! I love cooking. My grandfather was a chef and taught me the art of making sauces, roux’s and stocks. We have a large garden, and I love treating friends/family to meals completely from our farm. I also still play piano and spend whatever leftover time I have on the golf course or on the hockey rink.
Q: What is one thing you wish more people understood about emergency medicine?
I think it takes a very special skill set, as well as having ADD as a bonus, for a physician to run a good ED. The variety of patients we see, procedures we do, decisions we make, and difficult conversations we have with patients/families is a job, when done well, that’s not easily done, but is also extremely rewarding/or heartbreaking.
Q: What has been the most meaningful moment in your medical career so far?
When I was at the trauma center in Detroit, I had a young man who was shot and died. Pretty routine unfortunately but what was even more unfortunate (that I was about to learn) was how immune I had become to bad things happening to people. I went to the family room to tell the mother about the death of her son, which took me 10 seconds (because I had to get back to work). As I turned to walk out of the room, she grabbed my arm, started crying and told me she had three sons…. all of whom had died of violent crime….and that I was the physician for all three of them and had told her of each of their deaths. That was the biggest smack in the face I have ever experienced, and it positively changed my life and the way I practice medicine/interact with patients and families. I have regained the personal side of medicine, the human side of medicine…or the art of medicine and I think that’s what has kept me from getting burnt out.
Q: What advice would you give to a new physician entering the field?
To remember the human side of medicine. We can have such a bigger impact on the people we care for if we listen more, share some of our own experiences, and actually show an interest in our patients.
About Lake Emergency Partners (LEP):
Lake Emergency Partners (LEP) is an emergency medicine group with a unique partnership and ownership model that attracts emergency medicine professionals seeking the culture of accountability and innovation necessary to meet today’s healthcare challenges. LEP’s mission is to provide the highest level of patient care by valuing, supporting, and treating physicians fairly. LEP supports emergency departments within Insight Health and OSF Health Systems throughout Illinois and Michigan.
About Emergency Care Partners (ECP):
Headquartered in Pensacola, Florida, ECP is the largest single specialty provider of emergency medicine in the United States. With client partners in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Vermont, ECP currently treats more than 1,700,000 patient visits annually at 66 sites of service. ECP supports a clinical workforce of 1000+ physicians and mid-level providers. The company employs a differentiated model relative to other platforms in the industry, highlighted by the ability to maintain ownership through its physician partnership model with regional/local groups to maintain their brand and clinical autonomy while benefitting from ECP’s resources.
For more information, please visit www.ecp.net.