We've served 75+ health systems.
Strategists, clinicians, operators, and technologists who have spent two decades building market-leading urgent care programs. We know what works. We've served 75+ of them.
Real programs.
Real spaces.
Every clinic below was designed, launched, and optimized by UCP Merchant Medicine.
Driven by
outcomes.
For the last decade, Brandon has advised hundreds of leaders on approaches and models to optimize patient experience and throughput. To date, 150 urgent care centers utilize the UCP Merchant Medicine model and produce 34-minute average door-to-door times and Net Promoter scores in the 90s.
Brandon’s expertise is in healthcare consumer centric modern urgent care, virtual care, and occupational health services. He is an expert in artificial intelligence applications for healthcare as well as Six Sigma and Lean methodologies.
Brandon holds an MBA from the University of Colorado with emphasis in Healthcare Administration.
Chris Lukasiak is Chief Executive Officer of UCP Merchant Medicine. He is a transformational leader in the healthcare technology space, known for his track record of scaling successful health tech companies. With over two decades of experience, Chris has played pivotal roles in four high-growth organizations, across diverse healthcare segments—including telehealth, population health, care coordination, and electronic health records.
His background spans a unique blend of commercial and operational leadership most recently as Chief Growth Officer at Access TeleCare. His work in provider and payer businesses expanding market presence and integrating acquisitions in high growth businesses uniquely positions UCP Merchant Medicine for scaling to meet our customer’s needs. In similar organizations from Experian Health and My Health Direct in the care coordination space, and Phytel which became the commercial engine for IBM Watson Health in the population health arena, as well as Allscripts in the EHR space, Chris has developed high-performance teams delivering operational excellence. A visionary strategist, he is rooted in a hands-on, data-informed approach to grow businesses shaping the future of healthcare delivery.
Dr. Richardson has created Chief Complaint, Documentation and Coding courses for Advanced Practice Providers and Medical Assistants to optimize their performance in Urgent Care. He led in the design of the user interface for clinical AI. Dr. Richardson is actively involved in the curation of a clinical AI model, medical data and question set.
Dr. Richardson is board certified in Family Medicine, a certified Medical Review Officer, and a certified DOT Medical Examiner. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland and Spartan Health Sciences University.
Deanette spearheads UCPMM's efforts to lead health systems through the personnel resourcing challenges endemic to the industry today by providing them with the tools to develop robust Medical Assistant-level support teams. This includes teaching the modern urgent care model and enhancing patient experience; ensuring strong clinical capabilities; cultivating a purpose-driven culture within MA-level support teams; and building education curricula to support all of these outcomes. Deanette is a highly effective, resourceful health care executive with proven expertise in achieving organizational goals through engaging and empowering team members and helping them develop as leaders. She provides an acute understanding of the staffing challenges faced by health systems, and successful strategies that can be deployed to UCPMM clients.
Deanette holds a Masters of Science in Nursing with a leadership emphasis from Walden University.
Dr. Russell has a rare combination of both clinical and industry leadership experience. He previously served in the Chief Medical Officer role with a multi-state telehealth service before joining UCP-Merchant Medicine. He currently provides clinical oversight for Intellivisit, leading a clinical and technical team to refine and improve the machine learning/AI “brain” behind Intellivisit–software that’s been used in over 700,000 Urgent Care (UC) encounters to date.
Additionally, Dr. Russell has been a leader in UC education and publishing with nearly a decade of medical podcasting and instructional video creation credits under his belt. He currently serves as an editor with EM:RAP, creating the CorePendium and UCMax products. Dr. Russell is the emeritus editor-in-chief of the Journal of Urgent Care Medicine, the world's only peer-reviewed Urgent Care journal, and has attained board certification in Medical Editing in the Life Sciences (ELS).
Clinically, Dr. Russell maintains an active and varied clinical practice ranging from telehealth to hospice to urgent care and emergency medicine. He is currently clinically board certified in both EM and Palliative Care. He is a fellow of CUCM, AAEM, and ACEP and has served in patient care and medical director roles in EM and UC for 15 years. Dr. Russell also holds a master’s in clinical research and has co-authored over a dozen peer-reviewed publications. He is data-driven and brings experience and passion for improving the quality of patient care through clinical metric development. He has been a frequent guest lecturer and keynote speaker at various domestic and international academic conferences.
With hands-on experience since 2010, Leah is instrumental in conceptualizing, evaluating, and enhancing urgent care operations. Prior to joining the UCP Merchant Medicine team, Leah was Director of Operations for MHM Urgent Care in New Orleans, Louisiana, which has since become part of Ochsner Health System. During her tenure, she worked alongside MHM executive leadership to grow an extensive urgent care platform from concept to fully operational sites.
Leah is a Biology and Medical Humanities graduate of Baylor University and holds a Master of Science in Health Care Management from the University of New Orleans.
John Scott Papador is an accomplished healthcare technology leader with deep expertise in cloud-based SaaS platforms and digital health solutions. As Co-Founder and CTO of MyHealthDirect (2007-2019), he architected a pioneering cloud-based healthcare scheduling platform that transformed patient access across major health plans and health systems nationwide. He successfully led the company through strategic acquisition by Experian Corporation, managing technical due diligence and integration planning.
Papador's healthcare technology expertise encompasses enterprise software architecture, HIPAA compliance, EHR integration, and scalable SaaS solutions for provider networks. He has built high-performing engineering teams, established security protocols meeting healthcare industry standards, and delivered digital transformation initiatives for Fortune 500 healthcare clients including GE Medical Systems.
The board behind
the mission.
Jay Mason
Luke Peterson
Kate Lovrien