The Earnhardt Consulting Blog
A New Chapter, Built on Thirty Years · #1
In 2025 I closed a chapter that lasted nearly twenty years. From 2006 to 2025 I worked at Health Connect America, a behavioral health and foster care provider based in Franklin, Tennessee, and I rose to Senior Vice President of Strategy & Development. That work put me where strategy meets daily operations: growth across state lines, new models of integrated care, and the workforce those models depend on.
Two parts of that work stayed with me. The first is payor strategy. I held all of Health Connect America's payor relationships and built a network of executive-level relationships with managed care organizations across the country. Growth in this field runs through those relationships, and I learned that lesson from the inside. The second is people. Programs only work when the staff delivering care stay connected to the mission, which is why I championed SigBee, a daily check-in program for workforce engagement, during my time there.
Why a practice of my own
I founded Earnhardt Consulting in 2025, based in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, to bring that operator's experience to other behavioral health and child welfare organizations. The questions I help executives and boards work through are the ones I spent my career answering: where to grow, how to enter a new state, how to integrate care, how to navigate regulation that shifts across states and payers, and how to keep the people who deliver the care.
Alongside the practice, I serve as an expert for GLG, AlphaSights, VISASQ/COLEMAN, and Apex Leaders, where investors, executives, owners, and private equity firms consult me on behavioral health strategy and growth. I continue to track Medicaid trends and maintain strong connections at CMS. I also serve on the Professional Advisory Board of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Social Work, and I am actively seeking board service with behavioral health and child welfare organizations.
What this blog will be
This is the first post in a series. In the ones ahead I will write about what I am seeing: Medicaid trends, managed care, multi-state expansion, and the workforce questions every leader in this field is carrying right now. If your organization is working through one of those questions, I would welcome a conversation.