Thomas (Tom) Harter, PhD, is the Director of the Department of Bioethics and Humanities at Emplify Health by Gundersen in La Crosse, WI. He received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Tennessee (2010), specializing in medical ethics and business ethics. Dr. Harter also completed the 2-year Cleveland Fellowship in Advance Bioethics (CFAB) (2010-2012). As Emplify Health’s primary clinical ethics consultant, Dr. Harter has conducted >1200 consultations since 2012. Dr. Harter’s work also includes providing ethics education programs for house staff, medical students, nursing students, and physician assistant students, and in-services and workshops for the medical staff, nursing staff, social workers, and the spiritual care department.

Dr. Harter chairs both the Gundersen Health System Institutional Review Board and the Emplify Health Ethics Committee. In these roles, Dr. Harter helps develop institutional policies and practices, staff education, and patient/community education. Dr. Harter’s research on ethical issues that arise at the intersection of business, medical professionalism, and patient care has resulted in numerous peer-reviewed conference presentations, articles, and book chapters. He serves as the President-elect of the Bioethics Network of the Upper Midwest (BENUM) (2024-2026), as the Secretary of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors (2024-2027), as the facilitator of the Ethics Roundtable for the Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative, is the co-chair of the Wisconsin POST coalition, and is a board member of the Council on Program Accreditation for Clinical Ethics Training (COPACET) (2026-2027).

As an adjunct, he teaches healthcare ethics courses with The George Washington State University, Winona State University and the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. Dr. Harter is the co-editor of the recently published textbook, “Medical Professionalism: Theory, Education, and Practice” (Oxford University Press, 2025), in which he also authored a chapter on professionalism through the lens of physicians as employees.