Today we’d like to introduce you to Allison.
Allison, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Our Why
Allison Baynard, FNP-BC and Kevin Rosenthal, JD BSN RN are dedicated healthcare and human services professionals with decades of experience between us. Allison grew up in the community she serves for more than a decade as a family nurse practitioner–raised in Trappe; graduated from Salisbury University with her Masters of Science in Nursing in 2008. She practiced for most of her career with Choptank Community Health System in Cambridge.
Kevin is a lawyer turned behavioral health nurse. He managed a law office in Easton from 2011 until 2017. He graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Nursing from Salisbury University in 2017. After nursing school, he worked for private, state, and federal hospital systems in Maryland and Washington, DC.
We understand how impersonal large healthcare systems can be and how dehumanized they can make you feel. We worked in those environments. We felt the same way often. While we value the work our colleagues do at large healthcare systems, we think the large system approach to healthcare may not be healthy for all patients and providers. We saw that in our community there were no affordable alternatives to large healthcare systems. We wanted to do something about it.
We wanted to bring back the personal, affordable, and accessible primary care we remember growing up. We remember growing up with small community primary care clinics. We were neighbors. We saw each other around town–at the grocery store and on the soccer field with their kids. Their clinics were familiar and personal. They knew us, our families, and made time to discuss our goals. We think we can practice primary care that way. So, we founded Nightingale Health.
At Nightingale Health, we want to serve a smaller community in a more accessible and personal way than larger healthcare systems can. Using the Direct Primary Care model, we think Nightingale Health can deliver personal and convenient primary care at a lower cost than conventional primary care from fee-for-service larger systems dependent on insurance payments.
As a direct primary care clinic, we will not bill your insurance for any services. Ever. The monthly fee payment may be eligible for your annual deductible, FSA, and/or HSA. You will need to check with your insurance provider if you have one. We will strive to give you what you need to minimize your costs. Your costs for testing, diagnostics, and other third-party provided services might be covered by your insurance.
If you don’t have insurance, you can still be a member. We want to provide you the same high level of care regardless of insurance at a reasonable price. We believe that people should not have to go bankrupt to take care of themselves. With that in mind, we negotiated pricing for with local third-party testing and diagnostic providers for our uninsured members. We do our best to maximize savings to our members.
We grew tired of the state of primary care where we live. We wanted something local, personal, and accessible. At Nightingale Health, we want to take the time to help you with your goals. We want to help you take care of you.
About Us
Allison Baynard, FNP-BC is a lifetime resident of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. She graduated from Salisbury University in 2008 with a Master of Science in Nursing, and shortly thereafter was certified by the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) as a Family Nurse Practitioner. She has spent her entire career providing high quality primary care to residents locally and loves getting to know her patients like family. Her goal for Nightingale Health is to create a practice where she can continue to provide high quality primary care, but to eliminate a lot of the problems with today’s fee-for-service healthcare system.
Kevin Rosenthal, JD, BSN, RN is a “jack of all trades” problem solver who cares about people and his community. Among other things, Kevin ran a human rights immigration law office, co-founded a local non-profit, and worked as a psychiatric and quality improvement nurse. In addition to his responsibilities for Nightingale Health, Kevin works part-time at the Chesapeake Multicultural Resource Center.
Our History
We founded Nightingale Health in January of 2023. For the first year, we rented a single exam room from another health services practice. At the end of that first year, we knew that what we do and how we do it were resonating with our community. In July of 2024, we rented our own small building in downtown Easton no bigger than a shipping container. In the Summer of 2026, we will move to a new building large enough for us to expand our clinic and hire staff by the Fall or Winter of 2026. We are proud to have grown Nightingale Health from a single exam room rented from another practice to its own building and beyond. We will continue to build sustainable long-term health care partnerships with our members, patients, and clients to help them reach their goals..
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No startup or entrepreneurial experience is smooth, in our opinion. It is messy. Things move fast and resources are scarce, until they aren’t. The number one challenge we faced in our small rural community was finding physical clinical space from which to operate Nightingale Health. As we continue to grow and expand, we require more physical space. This next move will hopefully be our last.
Another challenge we faced was understanding the logistics and industry standards for supplies, laboratory tests, credentialing, and other specialized knowledge that large health systems hire staff to manage. Opaque pricing, general purchase organizations, and infrastructure limitations were concepts with which we as clinicians had never encountered professionally. We had to figure it out ourselves. It was a challenge to learn all the operations/administration skills and processes while also providing high quality clinical services.
As you know, we’re big fans of Nightingale Health. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Our passion is to guide our patients to meet and exceed their wellness goals. We founded Nightingale Health because primary care should be personal, accessible, preventative, and affordable. Using the monthly membership model of direct primary care, members receive preventative personalized care based on their goals. With extended appointments and ancillary services offered, Nightingale Health provides patients holistic primary health care at an affordable, transparent cost.
Direct Primary Care monthly membership includes routine checkups, physicals, and labs; preventive screenings; chronic disease management; acute care; and, referrals to specialists. A la carte treatment related services and products include acute care for non-members; weight loss with GLP-1 administration; testosterone replacement therapy; bioidentical hormone replacement therapy; allergy sublingual immunotherapy; and, nurse-led cognitive behavioral therapy.
We cultivate trust and rapport through our personalized, membership-based care. Our members love our exceptional direct communication, same-day access, and a compassionate, “family-like” atmosphere. Allison receives specific praise for her attentive approach and successful outcomes related to the a la carte treatment related services.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Risk is inherent in all human activities. Merely stepping off the curb to cross the street, we risk being struck by a bus. Being human is risky. Being an entrepreneurial human even more so.
When Allison and I started Nightingale Health, she had just left her position with a large health system and I was working part-time at a local non-profit between nursing positions. We started Nightingale Health when our income and economic security were at their lowest. I saw infinite ways that this business could fail and lead us to financial ruin as a family. We borrowed from our retirement accounts, asked our friends and family for loans, emptied savings and investment accounts, and did everything we could think of to safeguard our family’s economic security. Nightingale Health is sustainable and expanding because we worked hard, received the support we needed, and were a bit lucky.
And, what we now know, is that risk and reward travel together. In sound decisions making, risk is allocated and mitigated as best as possible and rewards are proportional to the risk assumed. Moving to a new location, launching a new product/service line, or publishing new marketing content all involve risk. If we make good decisions, the risks we assume are calculated and mitigated to maximize the potential proportional reward.
As for the risks that Nightingale Health faces in the future, we are moving to a new location five times larger than our present location. It is expensive and risky to make this move. However, without moving, our growth is severely limited. So, we assume the risks in the move, and mitigate them through research and working with experts to make the best decisions possible. So, in the Fall of 2026, Nightingale Health will move to its new location with the intention of hiring additional staff as soon as possible.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.nightingaledpc.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nightingalehealthdpc
