We are talking about staffing a Critical Access Hospital with Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners. We’re having that conversation with Mark Zellmer, Ph.D., PA.-C, who has been a PA since 1983 graduating from the University Iowa PA Program.
“Having physicians is important and wonderful and necessary in rural communities, but there may need to be more than just physicians.”
Mark became a PA after serving as a volunteer EMT while teaching high school chemistry and biology in a rural Iowa community that previously had no ambulance service. Mark subsequently becoming a paramedic.
Mark’s PA career has included practice in an Iowa county without a hospital or a stoplight, and in Minnesota in both primary care in Red Wing and later, a tertiary care practice at Mayo Clinic, Rochester.
As a PA educator, Mark was the founding director of rural oriented PA programs at the University of South Dakota and the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. He holds a Ph.D. in Public Health, Epidemiology emphasis.
His current practice is as the lead hospitalist and an emergency room provider at a rural, Critical Access Hospital, Gundersen Tri-County, in Whitehall, WI.