Fractional & Interim CMO Services

Bringing clarity and structure to clinical leadership in complex environments

I founded Collaborative Practice Insights to partner with FQHCs, community health centers, and small health systems — building sustainable clinical leadership grounded in relationships, trust, and shared purpose. I work alongside your executive team to bring structure, provider alignment, and operational clarity to organizations navigating real transition.

Start a Conversation Engagement Areas

Guiding Philosophy

"When healthcare stakeholders are truly aligned — around purpose, integrity, and compassion — remarkable things happen for patients and communities alike."

Jason Lake, MD, MMM — Founder & Principal
Fractional & Interim CMO

Engagement Areas

Fractional and interim clinical leadership
for organizations that need it most

Many smaller healthcare organizations are doing exceptional work — but without the clinical leadership infrastructure to sustain it. I partner with organizations like yours to build that infrastructure: clarifying governance, strengthening provider engagement, and aligning clinical and operational leadership around shared purpose.

Clinical Leadership Structure & Governance

Clarifying roles, decision-making authority, and accountability structures that allow clinical teams to operate with confidence and consistency.

Provider Engagement & Alignment

Working directly with clinical teams to understand what's driving disengagement — and building the trust and shared purpose that allows providers to invest fully in the organization's mission.

Dyad Leadership Development

Strengthening the clinical-operational partnership that is the foundation of effective health system leadership — building mutual understanding, shared language, and aligned strategy.

Quality & Patient Safety Oversight

Providing experienced oversight of quality improvement, patient safety, and clinical performance — ensuring governance structures support both care excellence and accountability.

Care Delivery Strategy

Working with leadership teams to design and implement integrated care delivery models, care team structures, and the organizational conditions that support value-based, patient-centered care in community health settings.

CMO Vacancy Bridging & Transition Support

Providing experienced, embedded clinical leadership during vacancies or transitions — maintaining momentum while long-term solutions are developed.

How I Work

Three principles that guide every engagement

I step into organizations as a working clinical leader — not an outside advisor — operating alongside your executive team where decisions are made, on a part-time or interim basis.

Clarity Before Solutions

I start by listening — to leaders, to providers, to care teams. Sustainable solutions start with genuine understanding of the organization, its culture, and its people. I don't arrive with a pre-packaged approach.

Working With Providers, Not Around Them

Provider engagement isn't primarily a communication problem — it's a leadership and trust problem. But communication is almost always part of it: providers who don't feel heard, who learn about decisions after the fact, or who never understood the "why" behind them. I work directly with clinical teams to create the conditions where genuine alignment becomes possible.

Practical and Sustainable

I focus on approaches that make sense for your organization — your size, your resources, your community. What works in large health systems rarely translates directly to an FQHC or critical access hospital. I build solutions your team can own and sustain long after our engagement ends.

Is This the Right Fit?

Organizations typically reach out when...

A CMO departure — planned or unexpected — has left a leadership gap that can't wait for a permanent hire.

Providers are disengaged, and leadership isn't sure why — or how to begin rebuilding trust.

The clinical and operational sides of the organization aren't aligned, and it's starting to affect care and culture.

A period of growth or integration has outpaced the existing clinical leadership structure.

Quality and governance processes need to be built or strengthened — not just audited.

Leadership wants a thought partner who understands both the clinical and executive dimensions of the challenge.

If any of these feel familiar, let's have a conversation.

About

A physician executive who has been in the room

Founder & Principal

Collaborative Practice Insights LLC

National Medical Director, Primary Care

Walmart Health

Chief Medical Officer & EVP

Confluence Health

Physician & Leader

U.S. Army

I'm Jason Lake, MD, MMM — a physician executive with more than two decades of experience spanning clinical practice and senior healthcare leadership.

My career has moved between worlds that don't always talk to each other: the exam room and the boardroom, integrated health systems and mission-driven community organizations, strategic vision and the day-to-day reality of provider teams. That range is what I bring to every engagement.

My background includes serving as Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President at Confluence Health, a fully integrated regional health system in North Central Washington, and as the first National Medical Director of Primary Care at Walmart Health. Earlier in my career I practiced medicine and developed as a leader during eleven years of military service, including progressive leadership roles and an overseas deployment.

Today, through Collaborative Practice Insights LLC, I selectively partner with healthcare organizations where I believe I can make a meaningful difference — currently including an active engagement as Interim CMO with a federally qualified health center.

My approach is grounded in the same values that have guided my entire career: relationships, integrity, continuous learning, and the belief that when people are genuinely aligned around shared purpose, remarkable things happen for patients and communities alike.

After two decades moving between clinical practice and executive leadership, I've chosen to do this work selectively — partnering with organizations where I believe I can make a genuine difference, at a stage in my career where I can give that work my full attention.

MDSUNY Buffalo School of Medicine

MMMUSC Marshall School of Business

MA, Organizational Change & LeadershipUSC Rossier

CertificatesManaging Health Care Delivery — Harvard Business School
Value Measurement for Health Care — Harvard Business School

Contact

Start a Conversation

If you're navigating a clinical leadership challenge — or simply wondering whether fractional or interim CMO support might be the right fit for your organization — I'd welcome the opportunity to connect.

Email

LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/jmlake

"I selectively partner with healthcare organizations where I believe I can make a meaningful difference — not as a vendor, but as a genuine thought partner and embedded leader."

— Jason Lake, MD, MMM