Make Pain a Thing of the Past – terica cox – Physician Partners of America

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PPOA Patient Care Champions – Noemy Salinas

PATIENT CARE CHAMPIONS – NOEMY SALINAS, TEXAS

Our employees are all patient care champions, but some go the extra mile and we want to give them the recognition they deserve. They embody the PPOA values known as S.I.T.E. – Safety, Integrity, Teamwork, Empathy – which informs our service to patients and the community through high quality health care. 

Noemy Salinas is the practice manager of the PPOA Hurst, Texas location. With about 80 patients walking through its doors every day, it is the busiest pain clinic in the company’s Dallas-Fort Worth service area; but she handles it with grace and compassion and gratitude.

“I love being able to help. Talking to patients – some of them have no family and no one to talk to,” she says. “They catch me up on what they’ve been up to. So it becomes kind of like a friendship.”

Born in South Carolina and raised in Fort Worth, Salinas earned her Certified Medical Assistant certificate from Everest College. Very recently, she wrapped up eight years in the U.S. Army Reserves.

She was among the first wave of PPOA hires, in March 2014, starting as a medical assistant, then promoted to clinical coordinator – the precursor of today’s practice manager position.

“Noemy is very engaged in supporting her providers and support team,” says her regional supervisor, Rhonda Boysen. “Her team leads in many of PPOA’s initiatives in Texas. She has the respect of her teammates and they have wonderful collaboration amongst the group.”

One reason for that closeness is that several of her co-workers have been at Hurst since the beginning.

“We’re like a family,” says Salinas. “A family that has grown.”

As for her own family, she and her husband, Ryan, have two daughters: Genesis, 6, and Sophia, 4. Family is paramount in her life, and she sees her role as a fulfillment of her parents’ dreams.

“My parents are from Mexico and didn’t have the resources to pursue studies. My mom really wanted to be a nurse. She’d talk about it with great excitement – how cool it would be. She was so excited about it that it got me excited about it,” Salinas says.

While the pace can be hectic, Noemy Salinas never forgets why she is there. “Seeing the transformation of patients is amazing. Some people come to us and can barely walk. Over time, you see them come in and they can stand up straight and walk,” she says. “Seeing that gives you a purpose.”

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PPOA Patient Care Champions – Terica Cox

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TERICA COX – REGIONAL MANAGER, TEXAS

Our employees are all patient care champions, but some go the extra mile and we want to give them the recognition they deserve. They embody the PPOA values known as S.I.T.E. – Safety, Integrity, Teamwork, Empathy – which informs our service to patients and the community through high quality health care. 

Terica Cox manages her Texas clinical teams on one key principle: “I tell them that we are all one fall away from being a patient ourselves and we should treat patients the way we would want to be treated,” she says.

It comes in part from personal experience. A lifelong Dallas resident, Cox says her mother suffered a bout of sickness and had to have several emergency surgeries. “Healthcare intrigued me. I wanted to learn more about it and how I could help my mom in her time of need,” she says.

That led her to study at PCI Health Training Center in Dallas and become a certified medical assistant (CMA). She worked in a variety of specialties including occupational medicine, cardiology, labor and delivery, and internal medicine, before finding pain management.

“I love patient care. I love specialty, so anything that’s a specialty allows me to learn new things. I like to learn new things all the time,” she says.

She joined PPOA in November 2014, in a position that was then known as a clinical coordinator, in the Grapevine location, now closed. She was later promoted to practice manager of the North Dallas clinic, and assumed her regional manager position in 2016.

She now oversees practice managers in Carrollton, Desoto, Frisco, McKinney and Richardson, plus two Capstone Pain and Spine partner clinics.

 

“I love the relationships you build with patients because these are the people you see every month,” she says. “Knowing we’re making a difference, seeing patients relieved of some of their pain, is rewarding to me.”

For Terica Cox, that means not only making sure patients receive excellent health care, but also asking them about their day, or a recent vacation, or their children. She embodies the patient-focused concept of AIDET and instills it in the people she supervises.

She is also known for both leadership and interpersonal skills. “I want to be the kind of manager that people feel they can come to and talk about anything,” she says. “I try to make it personable and be approachable.”

She has been known to invite team members for holiday dinners, check on those who are sick, or just call and say hello to someone she hasn’t heard from in a while.

“Terica Cox is very passionate about every patient having a great experience,” says Rhonda Boysen, Cox’s supervisor. “I’ve also found her to be engaged and resourceful to providers and support staff in her clinics.”

As you might imagine, family is everything to Cox. She and her husband have two daughters: Nature, who turns 24 this year, and Breyanna, 11.

Nature is following in her mother’s footsteps, taking classes toward her nursing degree. Mother and daughter are study partners, too: Cox is now working on her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree at West Coast University in Dallas.

“I look forward to continuing to learn and grow,” she says.

 

 

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