About

Mission:
To provide Oklahoma communities with efficient emergency medical access while ensuring the highest level of care and compassion

Vision:
Provide access to comprehensive emergency care to members of every community big or small

Our Story

When I was a second year emergency medicine resident, I began moonlighting in a rural hospital in Elk City, Oklahoma. When I arrived at Elk City, it was staffed, like many small hospitals, by non-emergency medicine residency trained doctors or doctors that had not finished a residency at all. After two months, much to my surprise, I was asked if I would be willing to take on the job of their ER Medical Director. At the time, being a second year resident this was unheard of, but they must have noticed the difference being ER trained makes. This was uncharted territory; I told them I would have to ask my residency director. He thought it was funny that anyone would want a second year resident to be the director of their ER but thought it would be a good learning experience and told me as long as it didn’t interfere with my obligations to my residency training it was okay with him. As a new and enthusiastic director, I was excited to improve the emergency department. After obtaining our numbers, I quickly realized that I would need to recruit some of my fellow residents if I really wanted to make a change. Matt Jenkins, a long time friend and fellow resident, was one of the first people I asked and he too was excited for the opportunity to help the ER around. Before long ER residents that we had recruited from OSU were filling half of the schedule. Coming to work at Elk City was especially rewarding because of the appreciation we got from the nursing staff. At that time it was half staffed by ER trained docs and half staffed by non-ER trained docs and they were very appreciative of our efficient ER management and up-to-date clinical practices. The change made an immediate impact. All of our statistics were improving dramatically and the perception of the ER was even changing in the community. Apparently administration and the board of directors had also taken note; mid way through my third year, the CEO of the hospital called me in for a meeting. He asked if we would be interested in forming a group to staff the emergency department. Again this was unreal to me. Excitedly, I called Dr. Jenkins and told him what had happened and asked if he would be interested in starting our own ER Group. He was in and Premier Physician Staffing was born. Our group began staffing the emergency department in Elk City in April of our 4th year of residency and ever since, we have consistently put up industry leading numbers for Emergency Medicine. Late in 2015, administration came to us again, telling us that they were having trouble with the current hospitalist group. This was something we had witnessed first hand, often being told that we had to transfer another patient because they were too sick for our hospital. These were patients that I knew we had the capability to care for as a facility. In January of 2016, we started a hospitalist group in order to ensure that the hospitalists were internal medicine trained and shared our philosophy on providing quality care locally. Again, the results have been excellent. Having the ER and the hospitalist group on the same page has reduced transfers and increased our overall hospital census, allowing families and friends to visit their loved ones locally, while still receiving industry leading care.

Following our success at Elk City, we feel that we have identified a niche, providing well trained emergency medicine and internal medicine physicians hospitals to rural Oklahoma, bringing access to comprehensive emergency care to members of every community big or small.