LindsayScalesMorganPAMMS, PA-C

Summary

• I am a highly motivated, compassionate physician assistant with 14 years of experience working in cardiothoracic surgery (5.5 years), family medicine (6.5 years) and now urgent care (2 years).
  
  I recently transitioned to urgent care from family medicine because family practice administrators, health insurance companies and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have made family medicine counterproductive to PCPs ability to provide valuable care for their patients’ most pressing medical needs.
  
  Insurance companies insidiously encroach on PCPs abilities and authority to rigorously apply clinically appropriate, evidence based, comprehensive care for our patients. Corporate medical
  conglomerates perversely prioritize profits over compassionate care. Family medicine has become increasingly hostile, useless and ineffective. I have realized that every button I clicked during a PCP patient visit was a button clicked for someone other than my patient.
  
  While working in urgent care may not afford me the opportunity to provide the same continuity of care that I truly want to provide for every patient, being an urgent care provider does allow me to address my patients’ most pressing issues without having to drown them in excessive data mining, peddle and bill for superfluous screening or sell unnecessary insurance driven diagnostics; all of which have been shown to worsen, not improve, medical outcomes.
  
  Is urgent care a way forward? I don’t know. What I do know is that, as an urgent care provider, I continue to enjoy all aspects of providing comprehensive care to both insured and underserved patients, provide acute and salient medical care, provide much needed medical education, manage chronic disease, help patients know when interventional diagnostics and procedures are needed, share much needed insight into navigating our country’s overly complicated healthcare system and give patients the tools they need to get the care they deserve.