Allison Edwards is a family physician and founder, Kansas City Direct Primary Care. She can be reached on Twitter @KansasCityDPC. 

COVID vaccines: side effects, myths, and madness

Conditions
January 22, 2021

I received my COVID vaccine on December 21st before starting an ER shift; sitting in the cold, plastic chair in a hallway-turned-vaccine-clinic, I tipped my head back to blink tears into submission as I reflected on making it this far in the pandemic without contracting COVID.  Four days later, after three twelve-hour shifts, I tested positive for COVID.

The COVID vaccine did not cause my positive result; getting exposed …

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COVID vaccines: side effects, myths, and madness

I wanted to care for people, so I became a direct primary care doctor

Physician
February 23, 2020

For whatever reason, being 35,000 feet in the air makes me reflective. During one flight, I had a flurry of thoughts, and the reason I decided to get into this whole mess of direct primary care spilled out of me. I want to share it here because if you don’t know why — or you can’t convey why — you’re doing something, what’s the point in doing it?

In line with …

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I wanted to care for people, so I became a direct primary care doctor

Lawyers have figured out what doctors haven’t

Physician
November 15, 2019

Dear lawyers:

You got it right. Your operations make sense. I know this is wrong for me to say — doctors and lawyers are often at odds with one another — but I have to tip my cap here. I have this unsettling feeling that — from a professional standpoint — your billing practices make sense. And the way you do your documentation also makes sense. Your delegation and hierarchy make …

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Lawyers have figured out what doctors haven’t

Data has become a four-letter word in primary care

Physician
October 31, 2019

We primary care physicians hate data. Taken on their own, numbers are benign, but when we hear the word “data,” physicians are reminded of a litany of related issues that make our lives far more difficult: checkboxes. Regulatory compliance. Prior authorizations. Unnecessarily complicated payment schemes.

By virtue of our training and the principles that guided the decade we spent obtaining our degrees, we are empiricists by nature. It’s sad to think …

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Data has become a four-letter word in primary care

Why we need more physician entrepreneurs

Physician
December 19, 2018

Three years ago, I had a massive, life-changing event. It passed with little notice; it was beyond banal and happened while eating sushi with a colleague in a landlocked state.

Here I am with a young patient at the direct primary care practice I opened in Kansas City, Kansas, after residency.

We were in our last year of residency (he in internal medicine, myself in family medicine) and had realized that we …

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Why we need more physician entrepreneurs

Managing your freedom after residency

Physician
July 18, 2018

The first time I was asked to provide a bio — in this case, it was to appear on my residency’s website — I wasn’t sure what to include. It was supposed to be short, not really an autobiography or memoir and it was supposed to make our program look approachable, impressive and balanced. I gave a quick summary of my background, my education, my interests, why I picked the …

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Managing your freedom after residency