New Faces at Ozarks Healthcare
Photography by James Moore
Ozarks Healthcare is recognized as a leading provider of skilled, compassionate medical care across its service area and one big reason for that is the quality of its personnel. Recently, four more individuals have been added to our ranks and we are pleased to introduce them to you.
Dr. Muhammad F. Khan
Internal medicine, cardiology/interventional cardiology
If the name Dr. Muhammad F. Khan sounds familiar it’s because this is his second tour of duty with Ozarks, having worked in West Plains for a decade between 2012 and 2022. Now, after a brief absence, the Pakistani native is excited to return to the community where he built a clientele and made many friends.
“The people here are so nice,” he said. “They made me feel so welcomed back in 2012 and over the next ten years, they really embraced my family and me. I knew my patients’ kids’ name and they knew mine. I loved my colleagues here at Ozarks as well.”
Khan said he felt so comfortable in the community that he routinely shared his cell number with patients and after he left, they would reach out to check on things.
“I started getting texts from them, and then I started getting letters from them, ‘How are you doing? Are you doing fine? How's your family doing?’” he said.
Khan attended King Edward Medical College in his native country before coming to the United States where he was initially engaged in research work in vascular and cardiac pathologies and disease of the heart. He completed his internal medicine residency at St. Luke’s Hospital in St. Louis as well as fellowships in echocardiography from the University of California at San Francisco and in cardiovascular medicine/interventional cardiology from the University of Utah.
Having studied so far and wide and in a bevy of larger health systems, he said many colleagues tried to dissuade him from coming to West Plains in the first place. However, he shared his litmus test from his initial interview that convinced him he had found a home.
“I was very lucky to have a mentor who told me, ‘When you enter someplace new, look at the people,’” he said. “What he meant was, if people are smiling, if they're cordial, if they're courteous and if colleagues look happy, that’s a good sign of what the community is like. When I first came here, I had never worked in a small hospital before, but it just felt comfortable right away.”
In his free time, Khan enjoys reading, fishing, watching sports and spending time and his wife, Samina, and the couple’s two children.
Jose Alonso-Escalante, MD
General Surgery
When Dr. Jose Alonso-Escalante landed in West Plains, it was a decided departure from the locations that his medical journey had taken him thus far.
Born and raised in Costa Rica where he received his medical training, Alonso-Escalante spent time at Harvard University for continuing medical training and then spent time in general medical research at Johns Hopkins Hospital. After stops in major metropolitan areas in Pittsburgh, Pa. and Chicago, Ill. he landed in the rural quiet of West Plains in part to be closer to his wife’s family in Kansas City.
“It’s an adjustment but in reality, when I was doing my medical school, we do rotate and learn how to practice medicine in rural settings,” he said of the change of pace. “So, it was a little bit of coming back to my roots and trying to provide a more direct line of care that you provide at a smaller place, I feel that has a bigger positive impact on people’s lives.”
Technically trained to be a transplant surgeon, Alonso-Escalante brings an uncommonly deep and broad background to his duties as a general surgeon at Ozarks Healthcare. The son of two physicians, he said he always wanted to go into the field of medicine and find surgery to be fulfilling in that respect.
In his spare time, Alonso-Escalante stays active with running, weight training and play classical guitar. He and his wife are expecting their first child in December.
Lori MacPherson, MD
Family Practice
Missouri native Dr. Lori MacPherson’s first goal was to become a world-famous biologist solving cancer. But what she discovered in college was, the field wasn’t what she thought it would be.
“I did a rotation at the University of Missouri-Columbia doing that and it wasn’t very satisfying,” she said. “It was a lot of pure science which is not applied science.”
A college adviser suggested she look at going to medical school, something the former farm girl had not considered at that point. After shadowing a surgeon for a few days to see what the life of a physician was like, she made a career decision that has paid dividends ever since.
“I was in the top 10 of my medical school class, and usually family practice aren’t the top 10 because it’s actually one of the harder specialties,” she said. “I love it; I get to think about the whole body, the whole person. It certainly is not boring to me.”
MacPherson arrives at Ozarks after 22 years with CoxHealth Mountain Grove and a short stint at the Marshfield Veterans Affairs Clinic. She completed medical school at the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1998 and her residency at CoxHealth Family Medicine in 2001, where she served as chief resident.
“I feel very fortunate that I’m not doing some specialty where I would be living in a big city every day,” she said. “I love living out in the country and being a family practice doctor allows me to do that.”
Emily Brown, NP
Arkansas native Emily Brown, NP, joins Ozarks Healthcare’s cardiology department after four years in a similar role at Baxter Health in Mountain Home, Arkansas.
“I have been told by several people who work here that the work environment is excellent,” she said. “Even though I’m new, I can see it’s the kind of environment that I want to be in.”
Brown said she was first inspired to pursue a career in health care during her teenage years, attending high school in Calico Rock, Arkansas.
“My uncle had been in and out of the hospital quite a bit. He received two heart transplants at Little Rock,” she said. “Basically, I saw the difference a nurse could make and what they could do for people and make their lives better. That's kind of when I started showing interest in the field.”
Brown received her post-secondary education at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, first earning her bachelor of science in nursing. She said on-the-job training, especially during a stint in the Baxter Health emergency department, provided a solid foundation for the curriculum and workload of being a nurse practitioner, a credential she attained four years ago.
“Working in the ICU for a few years gave me a great start,” she said. “If you can take care of those patients, you can take care of a lot of highly complex situations.”
She said she came to West Plains on the strength of the health systems’ reputation for treating their people well and giving them opportunities to advance their knowledge and skill.
“The motivation for me to come to Ozarks Healthcare is that I knew this would be a really good opportunity to broaden my knowledge,” she said. “It is a place that encourages somebody to grow as a person and a provider and to keep learning.”
