At the Endocrine & Diabetes Clinic in Cordova, you can call Joe Chiarella the practice manager, the office manager, the office director or the practice director, but first and foremost call him a leader.
“I’m not going to tell you I think I’m a born leader,” he said. “That kind of seems like I’m breaking my arm patting myself on the back. But I’ve never had any issues with people following me. Anytime I’ve been put in a leadership position, I’ve succeeded.”
Chiarella, 40, joined the clinic in January. It is his first civilian job since he was in high school in Rockland County, New York, where he was raised by his single father, a butcher by trade. In the intervening 23 years, Chiarella served as an Army medic for 15 years, including tours in Kosovo and Iraq, and then as a military instructor teaching such skills as tactical combat casualty care.
He has brought a military-type management style to the small clinic during a time of transition. As of October 1, it became part of Consolidated Medical Practices of Memphis – a move that Chiarella says will “open the door to a potentially greater referral base and hopefully greater revenue.”
He and his wife, Annberly, were living in Cordova with their two small children when, as Chiarella puts it, Mohammad Qureshi, MD, “took a chance” and hired him at the Endocrine & Diabetes Clinic.
“He saw that military members usually have drive and discipline,” he said. “My house is four miles from here at the clinic. The school is in between here and my house. So everything fell into place.”
Now many of the clinic’s staff of 12 find themselves doing everything but lining up in formation for inspection.
“I have a very militaristic way of dealing with things,” Chiarella said. “I refuse to lower standards. If you can’t meet them, that’s fine, you’re just not going to work here.”
His two guiding principles are punctuality and discipline.
“My definition of discipline is doing the right thing even when no one is watching,” he said. “When you’re supposed to be here at 8 o’clock, it doesn’t mean pull up in the parking lot at 8. It doesn’t mean check in and go get a cup of coffee at 8. It means you’re at your desk and ready to start working at 8. It’s something that’s hard for civilians to understand.”
His approach may sound harsh, but Chiarella insists the staff is more than OK with it.
“I can’t speak for them, but I think they appreciate it,” he said. “They appreciate being held to a standard. I have a great relationship with all of my employees.
“Teamwork makes the dream work. That’s what I always say. It’s about getting a good staff, which I believe we have here, who can make the patients happy and coming back.
“So I kind of envision the clinic as kind of a Special Forces ‘A’ team. That’s the staff I try to hire.”
When he signed up for the Army at age 17, Chiarella said, he told them he would be a medic or he wouldn’t join. He had become hooked at age 15 when a cousin, a paramedic, gave him a blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope for Christmas.
He became a medic with an infantry platoon in Germany, then with Air Assault Infantry at Fort Campbell, then on to Alaska and back to Fort Campbell as a flight medic. He went to help with a raging wildfire in Montana, where he won an award for saving a firefighter’s life after her car flipped as she was driving home after a long shift.
Then it was on to Iraq as part of a long-range surveillance detachment. His equipment consisted not only of a medical bag but also an M4 automatic assault rifle with a 40mm grenade launcher mounted to the bottom and a Beretta 92F 9mm pistol.
When asked if he ever had to fire those weapons, he said, simply, “yes.”
The next stop was Fort Bragg for a special operations medical course.
“Shortly thereafter I got into a Harley Davidson accident and that pretty much ended my Army career,” he said. Having also sustained injuries in Kosovo, Chiarella was medically discharged in 2005.
Now he is happily ensconced in Cordova, where his life revolves around his family, the clinic and his church. He can’t speak highly enough of the clinic’s staff, its physicians and particularly Qureshi.
“Taking nothing away from the other providers here – they’re great, too – but you couldn’t ask to work for a better physician than Dr. Qureshi,” he said. “The patients love him.”
Chiarella and Annberly are active in the Life Church and its outreach programs. They serve on the security team, and every Thursday night they and their children help pack bags of groceries to be distributed and “feed 3,300 kids a week, every week, all year, at several elementary schools,” he said.
When asked what he considers his greatest accomplishment, Chiarella first said Annberly and his children. But as far as career, he said, “just getting to be a soldier, period. We have a wall in my office at home that has our family on it. My wife’s grandfather was a World War II veteran and a POW; my grandfather was a World War II veteran; my dad was a Vietnam veteran; both of my uncles were Vietnam veterans.
“My wife is an Afghanistan veteran and I’m an Iraq veteran. It’s an honor to be part of my family – seven combat veterans over four wars.”
When asked if he would answer a call to duty if it came again, Chiarella said, “I was medically retired. My right ankle is fused shut at a 90-degree angle for the rest of my life. My left wrist has a ton of metal in it, and I have a heart condition.
“But I wouldn’t let any of that stop me if they gave me a choice. As much as my wife would shoot me over it, I’d say, ‘Gear me up, give me a gun and let’s go back to dealing with death again.’
“I’d go back in a heartbeat, yeah.”
