Harry Severance, MD

Severance_UT_EM_2010
Harry Severance

I was born and raised in Wilson, NC. (eastern NC) attended the Wilson City school system, and then Duke University Trinity College for undergraduate education.  I later attended Duke Medical School where Galen Wagner was one of my faculty advisors and stayed an additional year after medical school performing cardiology-based research (research ‘fellowship’) with Galen and the Duke Division of Cardiology.  I then completed residency training at East Carolina University in both Internal Medicine and Emergency Medicine (the first resident physician to complete a simultaneous 2-degree program at ECU).  I continued my Galen Wagner-acquired interest in clinical research during residency training, publishing several clinical research articles, and on into my ‘attending’ career, first at University of Mississippi Medical Center, and then back at Duke Medical Center.  In 2004 I was recruited to the University of South Florida (USF) to assist in developing a new clinical research program for the new residency training program in EM begun at USF/Tampa General Hospital that year.  It was during my time at USF/TGH that I became reacquainted with Doug Schocken and renewed my involvement with Galen Wagner and DUCCS.  In 2008 I was then recruited by the Dean of the College of Medicine at University of Tennessee, Chattanooga Campus to perform a similar clinical research start-up feat (as at USF/TGH) for the new residency program at UTCOMC/Erlanger Baroness Medical Center/Erlanger Health System (EHS).  However at EHS my career morphed into answering the need to develop and provide a research clinical and business infrastructure service-line platform (previously lacking) for all potential clinical investigators in the EHS system.  Answering this call, I have been successful in developing an institution-based clinical research service line, first in the areas of EM, Pulmonary Intensive Care and GI, and more recently expanding into Oncology, Cardiology, Plastic Surgery, OB-Gyn, and Pediatrics.  In April of 2013 EHS formalized this process by creating the new Erlanger Institute for Clinical Research and allowed me to become the first Medical Director and Business Manager for the Department.  To complement this process, I have developed a business-based, revenue-generating clinical research network, first involving the 6-site EHS system and more recently other community and regional hospitals interested in developing revenue-generating clinical research service lines at their facilities.  I hope to be able to use what I have learned thus far to help DUCCS develop a functional active clinical research network that can excite more of our DUCCS sites into participating in the growing field of clinical research trials!