Jennifer O’brien

An experienced, empathetic and effective consultant and leader, Jennifer O’Brien, has been in practice management for nearly 30 years.

Jennifer’s career has been a perfect balance of consulting and doing. As an external consultant and educator she has helped hundreds of practices, healthcare organizations and academic departments develop and grow. That consultant’s perspective has given her the energy and perspective necessary to affect positive change and growth each time she has joined a practice, hospital organization or academic department. Most recently as the CEO of Little Rock Diagnostic Clinic, Jennifer was the administrative leader of 200-employee, 36-physician practice with a five-room endoscopy center, comprehensive imaging, a 32-chair non-chemotherapy infusion center and a high complexity laboratory doing over 1 million tests per year, which served 1000 patients each day. The experiences she has had doing further enhance her abilities as a consultant. She understands first-hand the challenges of leading and facilitating organizational performance, improvement while managing day-to-day issues. Jennifer has authored over 40 articles on various aspects of practice leadership and management.

Jennifer has been with KZA on and off since the beginning of her career in 1987. Other positions she has held include: Executive Director of Arkansas Specialty Orthopaedics; Senior Organizational Development Consultant Division of Hematology-Oncology, Department of Medicine Rush University Medical Center; Director, Leadership Development Programs Tenet Healthcare Corporation; Manager, Operations Strategy Tenet Healthcare Corporation; Director of Corporate Training & Development Tenet Physician Services; Instructor Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health Louisiana State University Medical Center, Business Manager Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery Manager of Organization Development LSU Healthcare Network and Administrative Assistant to Department Chair, John J. Sciarra, MD, PhD, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation.

Jennifer holds a Master Science of Organization Development degree from Loyola University – Chicago, and was an English major at Boston University, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree.

Her most beloved role was as wife of a plastic surgeon who after 30+ years of practice could no longer operate because of an injury, and chose hospice and palliative care as a second career. Her love and support of him provided Jennifer an intrinsic understanding of the commitment that physicians and their families make to care for others. Her husband, Robert W. Lehmberg, MD, died two years after receiving a stage IV cancer diagnosis. Jennifer’s book The Hospice Doctor’s Widow: A Journal, is a full-color, art journal about their journey; it is slated for release on February 25, 2020 by Et Alia Press.