Meet the Staff

Bruce Ehrle serves as Executive Director of the Pierce County Medical Society, managing all aspects of Society activities and operations.  He has long ties to the Pacific Northwest having been on the staff of Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon in a senior capacity on Capitol Hill for over a decade.  Bruce also assisted with Wyden’s first run for the US Senate in 1995-1996, living in Portland, OR for the duration of the campaign.  In addition to his 12 years on the Wyden staff, Bruce’s time on Capitol Hill also consisted of two years on the staff of Rep. Jim Jontz of Indiana, a position he held shortly after his graduation from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. 

For a decade prior to assuming his duties as Executive Director of PCMS, Bruce was Senior Director of Government Affairs and Executive Operations at the American Health Quality Association where he advocated for improved health care quality across the nation with the White House, HHS, CMS, and Congress.  Bruce also planned and managed all educational and organizational events for AHQA.  Additionally, he was responsible for all governance activities of the association.

Bruce utilizes his health care policy and political experience from 25 years in the nation’s capital to assist physicians in our community navigate the complex changes underway in the health care system impacting the profession now at the local level based on initiatives that he witnessed being passed in to law back at the federal level in Washington, DC.  He also utilizes his past experience in the other aspects of Society business including advocacy, practice success/education, community engagement, collegiality/events, and governance.

As part of the Society's activities, Bruce serves as President of Pierce County Project Access, an organization that pays ACA health insurance premiums for those with demonstrated need and that coordinates donated care from physicians and other providers for patients with no insurance, as Vice Chair of the South Sound Military and Communities Partnership's Health Care Workgroup, as a member of United States Representative Dave Reichert's Health Care Advisory Committee, and as Vice Chair of Community Health Care's Medical Resident Education Committee that administers the residency program at CHC's five large clinics that make up the health center.  He is also a member of the Tacoma Trauma Trust Operations Committee that oversees details of activities for the combined Level II Trauma Center at CHI Franciscan St. Joseph Medical Center and MultiCare Tacoma General Hospital.  Bruce co-chairs the Society's Social Determinants of Health Workgroup and serves on the Board of Directors of the Pierce County Medical Society Foundation as Secretary.  He has also guest lectured at the University of Washington about health care policy and the reality of the way things work in the federal government versus what is often taught in the textbooks. 

When not handling his many PCMS responsibilities, Bruce enjoys wide ranging interests including fine art, classical music and jazz, history, Native American/First Nations art and culture, conservation of the environment, wildlife, and natural resources, astronomy, the diversity of activies all over the Pacific Northwest in Washington and Oregon, being an avid sports fan (especially for Major League Baseball, the NHL, the NFL, the NBA, and his beloved Michigan), active investing (especially in the stock, bond, government securities, and gold markets), and traveling extensively around the US, Canada (especially Vancouver and Victoria, BC), Europe (especially Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain), and the Pacific Rim (especially Australia, Singapore, and Japan) to share special times with friends and family.  He is devoted to supporting his friends and others who serve or who have served in the US Armed Forces.  Bruce is an ardent hiker who finds the Pacific Northwest perfect for the pursuit of that activity, rain or shine.  He joined our community in 2015 after 25 years in the nation's capital to partake of the high quality of life in the PNW while leaving behind the unhealthy environment of frequent gridlock in traffic as well as frequent gridlock in government in Washington, DC.