Greg Beilman, MD

In 1994, Greg Beilman, MD, came to the University of Minnesota Medical School for a critical care fellowship and has been here ever since.

“My focus has been on research in both resuscitation of hemorrhagic shock and treatment of patients with acute and chronic pancreatitis,” he said.

However, Dr. Beilman wears many hats––not only is he an esteemed researcher and general surgeon but he is also the associate dean for Clinical Administration at the Medical School, the senior vice president of Acute Operations at M Health Fairview and a professor in the Medical School’s Departments of Surgery and Anesthesiology.

“I love training students, residents and graduate students as well,” he said. “It’s incredibly rewarding to be able to take part in training the next generation of physicians.”

Leading the Response to COVID-19

Dr. Beilman has been instrumental in coordinating M Health Fairview’s response to COVID-19.

“M Health Fairview’s response is important for the state of Minnesota and the region because we touch about a third of the patients in the state,” he said.

On March 9, 2020––starting with the impending onset COVID-19––Dr. Beilman, along with colleagues, Mary Johnson, MS, and Linda Wick, NP, erected an incident command center on M Health Fairview’s Midway Campus.

“It’s been incredibly gratifying and incredibly fun to see how we’ve come together as a system to coordinate the response,” he said.

Taking Care of Minnesota

Dr. Beilman is also an Army officer and has been in the reserves for 27 years. He has had five deployments—four of those overseas. And for him, the COVID-19 pandemic felt a lot like some of his efforts with the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

“We are working hard together, coming up with solutions that may not be perfect but allow us to respond appropriately to caring for our patients,” he said. “The other big thing was the team effort. The fact that all of us felt and understood how important getting this response right was going to be.”

But those solutions, according to Dr. Beilman, could not have come together without tremendous teamwork and leadership.

“Dean Tolar and James Hereford have done a fantastic job inspiring our scientists to adapt what they were doing to meet the needs of our patients and our system––and they really did that,” he said. “The efforts by our departments and individuals were momentous, in terms of how to build personal protective equipment, how to develop pathways for care for our patients and how to develop our own COVID-19 testing sites.”

Dr. Beilman commends Minnesota Gov. Walz, along with other state leadership, for their response to the pandemic.

“At the end of this, the goal is to have improved the health and safety of the people of the state of Minnesota as much as possible,” he said. “I’d like to think that in a small part, we, as the leadership of M Health Fairview, have done the same thing for our patient population.”