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 encroach on providers’ ability and authority to provide clinically appropriate, evidence based, comprehensive care for their patients. Corporate medical
  conglomerates prioritize profits over compassionate care.
  
  Because of this, family medicine has become increasingly hostile and ineffective. I realized one day that every button I clicked during a PCP patient visit was a button clicked for someone other than my patient. I had to find another way to do the job I love.
  
  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 being distracted by excessive data mining, billing them for superfluous screening or peddling diagnostics they don’t want; all of which have been shown to worsen medical outcomes, not improve them.
  
  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 including salient medical care, health education, management of chronic disease, helping patients know when interventional diagnostics and procedures are needed, sharing much needed insight into navigating our country’s overly complicated healthcare system and giving patients the tools they need to get the care they deserve.