Birmingham’s Randy Johansen was recently named as the new CEO of American Family Care (AFC), a healthcare organization that aims to decrease emergency room overcrowding with easy access to both urgent and primary care according to their website.

Johansen succeeds the company’s former CEO Dr. Bruce Irwin, who founded AFC in Birmingham in 1982 after noticing the number of non-emergency patients sitting in crowded ER waiting rooms during continuous hospital visits with his father as a child.

Irwin died in April of this year and Johansen said previously that he feels a mixture of “profound sadness and honor” stepping into the role of his former mentor as reported by AL.com’s William Thornton.

But Irwin’s legacy of putting patients first will live on through Johansen and his team at AFC, he said in this week’s Q&A with the Lede.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.