Direct primary care and health IT: How one family physician found fulfillment
Feb. 19, 2026, David Mitchell — During the AAFP’s Whole Health Summit, family physicians will hear from nearly a dozen of their peers during three sessions devoted to addressing the challenges that make practicing medicine harder than it should be, identifying real-world solutions and helping attendees plot a course toward sustainable fulfillment.
It’s no coincidence that Ronya Green, MD, MPH, MBA, FAAFP, is featured in all three of those sessions during that May 17-19 event in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“I’ve never fit into just one lane,” Green said. “I’ve built a career that reflects my different interests, and I’m grateful for the exceptional training I received in this specialty and for everything I’ve learned from patients and organizations like the AAFP. I want my colleagues to feel empowered—our opportunities are limitless.”
After graduating from the Baylor Garland Family Medicine Residency, Green completed a fellowship in faculty development. She served as faculty at Methodist Charlton Family Medicine Residency in Dallas for six years before spending three years as program director at TriStar Southern Hills Family Medicine Residency in Nashville.
Only a decade into practice, she was ready for something completely different.
“I wanted to teach, and I spent a significant amount of time in graduate medical education,” Green said. “For a long time, it really fulfilled my needs. I had the awesome job of being a founding program director, and that was great. But I figured out that what I loved about working in GME was administrative tasks. I still loved clinical care, but I also wanted to work in a space where I could solve problems that were a bit more out-of-the-box and innovative. That led me into looking into what would give me that.”
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Thinking beyond a single career lane
In 2024, Green stepped away from academic medicine to launch her own direct primary care practice. She said building from the ground up gave her insights to the “operational friction” that keeps many practices from growing—everything from intake and scheduling to follow-up and patient communication. Within a year, her experience sparked a second venture: Get Care Nexus, a practice transformation platform designed to turn scattered tools into one connected system.
“Starting a practice reminded me how quickly great care can get buried under administrative noise,” she said. “With Get Care Nexus, we’re helping practices move from patchwork software to a single, HIPAA-compliant growth and operations hub, so the front desk runs smoothly, patients feel supported and teams can actually focus on care. Family medicine trained me to be adaptable, and I’ve always believed that physicians are meant to lead, build and innovate. The more family physician leaders I meet, the more I see we’re not confined to one lane. We’re wired for possibility.”
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Green also is the associate medical director for Tennessee’s Medicaid program, and she is keeping a foot in academia by teaching a health policy course at Meharry Medical College.
She has multiple leadership roles, including serving on the boards of the American Academy of Physician Leadership and a local accountable care organization, and she serves as chair of the Tennessee AFP’s Committee on Diversity and Inclusion.
Building sustainable careers through reflection, planning
“We’re trained to follow a specific path,” she said. “You work hard in undergrad to pass tests to get into medical school. Then you work hard in medical school to get into your desired residency. You work hard for three years in residency, and maybe additional fellowship training, to get to this place you think is going to be a utopia where you’ll have a magnificent patient-physician relationship. And for many, we feel a little unprepared for all the challenges when we get there, whether it be the dynamics of working with health care administrators, responsibilities related to teaching and research while also providing clinical care, tackling the issue of insurance and patients with complex needs.
“The Whole Health conference is an opportunity for physicians to take time to sit with themselves and others to determine what are the next steps for your path and what are actionable things that you can do to take those steps.”
Green said the summit is “not simply a didactic experience.” Attendees will work in small groups and build personalized action plans. The Academy will follow up with additional resources and encouragement after the event.
“We don’t want this to be another conference that attendees come to and get really great knowledge but aren’t able to apply it,” Green said. “I don’t want to call it accountability, but a friendly tap post-conference to say, ‘Hey, what about this thing that you talked about in the spring? Where are you with that?’ Life has many competing demands, and the challenges of everyday work in medicine can really slow down our trajectory. We look up in a year, and we’re in the same place. This event is for those who are considering a step out of the proverbial box and want an actionable, practical plan about what could be next for them.”
What’s next for Green? She says her DPC is in a “sweet spot” with roughly 200 patients. That leaves her time to teach, perform her duties with the state Medicaid program and lead her own business.
“Get Care Nexus took off faster than I ever expected,” Green said. “It started as a solution to the pain points inside my own practice, but it quickly became clear I wasn’t alone. Many practices are trying to deliver excellent care while juggling a patchwork of tools and constant administrative tasks. Get Care Nexus brings the essentials into one HIPAA-compliant system—CRM, EHR, telehealth, billing and marketing automation—built around smart workflows that keep patients moving forward without your team having to chase every step. The goal is simple: less busywork, smoother operations and more time for the work that actually matters.”