Nextera Healthcare – Dallas

I was raised in the Dallas suburb of Prosper with my four siblings and countless animals.  After graduating high school, I attended Southwestern University in Georgetown where I received a BA in Psychology followed by a Masters in Health Psychology from Texas State University.  I then moved to Arizona to attend Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine but returned to my roots in Dallas where I completed my Family Medicine residency at Methodist Charlton. 

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My frustration with our current system, both as a physician and as a patient, has made it a no-brainer to take this leap - and even my non-medical husband agrees.  The system is broken.  I could get on my soapbox, but we all know the problems.  Paradigm Family Health was founded to simplify healthcare and eliminate the bureauracy. 

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I entered medical school with the vision of serving my community with affordable and high-quality healthcare.  The direct primary care model is a membership-based model that helps decrease overall costs and passes the savings on to the patient.  All it takes is one abscess, one laceration, one ankle sprain, one Montezuma's revenge needing an IV, one illness while you're away on vacation, or one chronic disease and you can have hundreds if not thousands in healthcare bills.  That's where I come in.

I went to PA school at Baylor College of Medicine and have since spent the majority of my professional career in the Emergency Room of a level 1 trauma center, where I have truly seen it all.  The trenches of the ER built me into a strong clinician, but I have always felt the pull to spend more time (too much time, by ER standards!) with each individual patient.  The deeper I get into my career, the more I value the gift of time. Time to have meaningful conversations with patients, time to develop long-term relationships, time to individualize each patient's treatment options.  The direct primary care model at Paradigm allows for this gift of time to truly become a reality, and I am so thankful for it.

I grew up in a household full of medical professionals, so it seems my future was written in the stars. My mother was a labor and delivery nurse and my father a bone-marrow transplant oncologist.  I have two younger sisters whom I adore - another physician assistant and a nurse practitioner!  We grew up living where my Dad’s career took us (Boston - Seattle - DFW) and have been in TX since 1994.  I went to undergrad in Williamsburg, VA and graduated from The College of William & Mary with a biology degree and and wide open future.  I elected to spend the next year volunteering in the Dominican Republic, exposing me to medical care in a 3rd world country. Wow. That formative year ignited my passion for medical mission work, especially in Hispanic countries, and I have since returned on several additional mission trips to the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Guatemala.  I love the opportunity to speak Spanish, the family-oriented communities, and the culture of thankfulness despite having so little.

When the time came to start medical school at the University of Texas HSC in Houston (now McGovern Medical School), I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer two months before classes would start, and for the first time I had the experience of helplessness and fearfulness that can come with being a patient in our current, confusing system. I knew I wanted to change it to be better for others someday, but at the same time it was my extreme good fortune to have an excellent team of physicians who both treated me, and became role models through my medical training.

I met my husband in our first year of medical school (he was two groups over in the anatomy lab), and we were married in my home town of New Orleans in the Spring of our third year. We ultimately decided to stay in Houston to continue our residency training in the Texas Medical Center, where I pursued combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, and Devin trained in Anesthesiology. Now, after 8 years in Houston we have decided it is Devin’s turn to be close to home, and have moved back to Dallas where he grew up and his side of our family still lives.

We are so excited to begin our careers in Dallas, and it is such a privilege for me to be joining Dr. Benson at Paradigm Family Health! I have known for a long time that I wanted to take care of families, and to truly know my patients and community. I am delighted to have found a home in this model of practice, which I believe is the answer to that question of what went wrong with healthcare in our country and how I can make a difference. Direct Primary Care means placing the control back in the hands of the patients and physicians, so we can collaborate to make deliberate choices that are sensitive to individual needs, and create true wellness. I'm so excited to get started!