The Practice Patients Remember Starts at the Front Desk.
Chris Sund is a medical group and physician practice speaker for MGMA state chapters, practice administrator conferences and medical group leadership meetings. He helps practice leaders keep their front-desk and clinical staff, improve the patient experience in the first minute of a visit, and handle the patient and payer objections that land on their teams every day.
Why Do Practices Struggle to Keep Front-Desk and Clinical Staff?
A medical practice runs on a small team. When a front-desk coordinator, medical assistant or billing specialist leaves, the gap is felt the next morning by every patient and every provider. Those roles are also the ones absorbing the most frustration: schedules, prior authorizations, balances, and patients who are worried before they walk in.
Practice administrators carry a second problem. They are responsible for the patient experience and for physicians and providers who do not report to them. Chris works on retention and influence for a living, and his sessions give practice leaders language and habits for both.
- The small moments at check-in and checkout that shape how patients rate the whole visit
- Keeping front-desk and MA staff when the hospital down the street pays more
- Leading providers and peers who do not report to you
- LAARC for patient and payer objections: Listen, Acknowledge, Ask, Respond, Confirm
- Recognition habits a practice manager can run without a budget
Proof: Healthcare Stages and Frameworks in Print
The Power of Small Moments was the keynote at the Crawford County Memorial Hospital Patient Experience Recognition Dinner in January 2026, built around the idea that every person, from the front desk to the bedside, shapes the experience of care. Chris also delivered it to long-term care leaders at the Iowa Health Care Association conference.
His objection-handling framework, LAARC, was published by LeadingAge Illinois in its annual conference program and written up by Cisive and NAHCR. He has also keynoted the AOHP Annual Conference and moderated the Managing for Morale panel on staff retention for the ACHE Wisconsin Chapter.
Programs for Medical Group Audiences
Every session is customized to your members, your setting and your year.
The Power of Small Moments
The patient experience keynote. How brief, ordinary interactions at the front desk, in the exam room and on the phone shape how patients see the practice.The Spark Advantage
The retention keynote built on SPARK: support, purpose, appreciation, relationships, and knowledge and growth. What keeps small teams together.The LAARC Method
A five-step method for objections: Listen, Acknowledge, Ask, Respond, Confirm. Built for the patient, payer and hiring conversations practice teams face.How to Handle Objections
The full objections program as a keynote or working session, with live practice on the situations your staff hear every week.Formats
Each program runs as a keynote, a half-day workshop or a full-day workshop. A common format for a chapter conference is a general-session keynote followed by a working session for practice administrators.
Keynote
A general-session keynote for the full room, with stories and one framework attendees can use on the next shift.Half Day
The keynote content plus working time: leaders apply the framework to their own teams and leave with a written plan.Full Day
A leadership day built around your agenda, combining the keynote, applied sessions and planning time for a leadership group.Who Books This Session
Related pages: Patient Experience Speaker · Healthcare Leadership Speaker · Dental Speaker · Employee Retention Speaker
What Medical Group Planners Ask
Has Chris spoken to MGMA chapters or medical groups before?
His healthcare stages include hospital, occupational health, senior care and correctional health conferences, and a hospital patient experience dinner where the message ran from the front desk to the bedside. Sessions for a medical group or chapter are built on that same material and customized in a pre-event call around your practices, your staffing and your patients.Is he a clinician?
No. Chris speaks to the leadership, workforce and patient experience side of a practice: retention, recognition, influence and difficult conversations. He runs healthcare staffing organizations and sees every week why clinical and front-office staff take a job and why they leave one.Does the LAARC content cover patient and payer conversations?
Yes. LAARC (Listen, Acknowledge, Ask, Respond, Confirm) is a general method for objections. In a practice setting, the examples are built around the conversations your teams have about balances, scheduling, authorizations and referrals, and around hiring conversations with candidates.Who is the session for: administrators or front-line staff?
Both. Administrators and managers get the retention and influence practices. Front-desk, MA and billing staff get the small-moments framework and the objection steps. It works in a general session that mixes the two.What formats are available?
A keynote, a half-day workshop or a full-day workshop. Many groups pair a keynote at the chapter conference with a working session for practice administrators.
You Are Capable of More
The bestselling book behind the keynote, and the 2026 Paris Book Festival winner in the How-To category. Ten principles for closing the gap between what a team is producing and what it is actually capable of.Copies can be bundled for attendees or for every staff member in the practice, and Chris can run a signing table at the conference.
He Works on Retention Every Day
Chris is President & COO of Uniti Med, GQR Healthcare and Nebula. He has spent the past decade in healthcare staffing, building Uniti Med from startup to one of the largest healthcare staffing companies in the US: 10x revenue growth on the core brand, #3 on the Inc. Regionals list of the fastest-growing companies in the Midwest, and a Fortune Best Workplaces award along the way.Staffing is a retention business. Every week he sees why clinicians and caregivers take a job, and why they leave one. That is the material he brings to the stage, not theory borrowed from somewhere else.He is the bestselling author of You Are Capable of More, a Maxwell Leadership Certified coach, an Inc. contributor and a Forbes Business Council member.Stages I Have Spoken On
Where Healthcare Audiences Have Heard Chris
Hospital, association and healthcare leadership stages where Chris has spoken on patient experience, retention and objections.
Crawford County Memorial HospitalDenison, IAIowa Health Care AssociationDes Moines, IAAOHP Annual ConferenceTampa, FLACHE Wisconsin ChapterPewaukee, WILeadingAge IllinoisChicago, ILNAHCR 2025 Annual ConferencePalm Springs, CAAlso: Healthcare Keynote Speaker · Patient Experience Speaker · Speaking Frameworks · See all speaking engagements →
Bring Chris to Your Medical Group Event
Tell Chris about your chapter conference or your practice leadership meeting and what your teams are carrying this year. You’ll get a fast, straight answer on fit and availability.Check Availability & FeesResponse within one business day · Speaker kit, bio & headshots