MISSION
The mission of the California Urgent Care Association is to support the ongoing success of our membership through strong advocacy and education and to promote urgent care as a patient-oriented, accessible, and cost-effective sector of our healthcare system.
CAUSES
The California Urgent Care Association passionately cares about a variety of elements of that allow us to do what we do. Learn more here.
MEET THE BOARD
Our board consists of a diverse team of specialists from medical directors, practicing urgent care physicians, to business and legal support. To get involved, click here.
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Rob Mahan, MBA - President
Rob became CEO for Exer Urgent Care 6 years ago and has grown Exer from 4 sites to over 30 locations today. He has been a member of the CalUCA for the past 5 years. He has over 23 years of experience in multi-site retail healthcare. During his time as CEO at Exer, he has renegotiated payer contracts, raised debt/equity, added a lab, restructured its staffing model, revamped documentation practices, and launched several new business lines. Before Exer, he served as the CFO and then COO for a behavioral health company for 8 years. Preceding that, he worked for DaVita, a Fortune 500 Company in the kidney dialysis space. During his 9 years at DaVita, he lead the billing and collections team collecting $5.5 billion in annual collections, performed turn around services, and was a CFO for 7 start-up businesses lines ranging from $5M to $100M in annual revenue. He earned an MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA after working at PricewaterhouseCoopers doing financial consulting for distressed companies and turnaround services. He enjoys time with family, traveling and surfing as much as time allows.
Board Member: 2022-present
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Claudio Varga - Immediate Past President
Claudio has been Director of Operations for Vital Urgent Care in Newport Beach, California since 2013, where he was promoted from Director of Marketing, a position he’d held since 2010. During a medical management career spanning over three decades, Claudio has worked his way up the ladder from his first job as a medical assistant and X-ray tech, to eventually holding several key executive positions at prominent healthcare organizations throughout Southern California. His wide range of medical management expertise includes marketing, HR, RCM and EMR implementation. Claudio’s passion is retail healthcare, and he has been a fervent supporter of urgent care and the Urgent Care Association where he has been a regular conference lecturer specializing in urgent care marketing, operations, and customer service. In addition to a Bachelor of Science degree in Healthcare Administration, Claudio also holds a Certified Patient Experience Professional (CPXP) designation from the Patient Experience Institute (PXI) and the Beryl Institute, the leading authorities in the field of patient experience in healthcare. He resides in Corona, CA with his wife and two children where they enjoy exploring and appreciating everything The Golden State has to offer.
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Board Member: 2020-present
President: 2022-2023
Tiffany Reguera, FNP - Treasurer
Tiffany Reguera, FNP graduated from California State University, Chico with a bachelor’s degree in nursing and Western University of Health Sciences with a master’s degree in nursing concurrently becoming a family nurse practitioner. She is the managing owner of three walk-in clinics in far Northern California. In addition to leading her three clinics, she has worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs for 20 years. There she has been the chair of the VA’s Sierra Pacific Network Pain Committee. She has volunteered with Project Hope in Central America providing healthcare services with the US Navy on the USS Boxer. Tiffany is interested in continuing the work of UCAOA to expand urgent care services. She is passionate about the future of urgent care and promoting it is a necessary component of healthcare in our communities. Tiffany is happily married with two boys, ages 7 and 9. She enjoys dabbling in real estate and traveling. She lives in Redding, CA.
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Board Member: 2019-present
President Elect: 2020-2021
President: 2021-2022
Scott Prysi, MD - Board Member
Dr. Prysi earned his undergraduate degree from Washington and Lee University, his medical degree from the University of Virginia and his Master of Architecture degree from the University of California at Berkeley. He worked as both a healthcare architect and physician for several years before taking a full-time position as an Urgent Care provider with Doctors On Duty Medical Clinics in Monterey, CA in 2004. He became Medical Director of the group in 2014 and has focused on the incorporation Primary Care and Specialty services into their nine clinics. He is a passionate believer in evidenced based medicine and has developed “Best Practice” guidelines for the use of narcotics and anti-biotics throughout his organization. As a member of the Physician Advisory Group for the Central California Alliance for Health, he helped create and initiate a successful pilot program to divert MediCal patients from the ER to Urgent Care Centers. He is currently developing a Telemedicine platform for Doctors On Duty to meet the future needs of its’ growing patient population. He is an avid tennis player and downhill skier and lives in Monterey, CA.
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Board Member: 2018-present
President Elect: 2019-2020
President: 2020-2021
Kathryn Vandervort, MBA - Secretary
Kathryn is from Carmel Valley, CA. She graduated from Saint Mary’s College with her Bachelor of Science Degree in Psychology. She went on to pursue her medical assistant certificate, while completing her MBA with a concentration in Healthcare Administration from Sullivan University in Louisville, Kentucky. She started with Doctors on Duty in 2014, working as a cross-trained receptionist and medical assistant. She has advanced through the ranks of the company to become the Chief Operating Officer. She is passionate about putting humility and empathy in the heart of her leadership style. ​
Board Member: 2022-present
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Joe Toscano, MD - Board Member
Joseph Toscano, MD received his medical degree from Duke University
School of Medicine in 1989 and trained in internal medicine at the Naval
Hospital in San Diego. After a tour of duty with the Navy in submarine and
diving medicine, he has worked in emergency medicine and urgent care for
over thirty years.
He has been an attending emergency physician at San Ramon Regional
Medical Center in San Ramon, California since 1999. Dr. Toscano has
worked in Urgent Care since 2005 and was previously a partner and
corporate medical director for Pinnacle Medical Group, which operated five
urgent care clinics in California and Arizona. He is now an urgent care
physician with the John Muir Urgent Care group and the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory.
In addition to caring for patients, he is senior research editor for
Emergency Medicine Practice, a monthly, evidence-based, emergency
medicine CME publication and is helping produce their new publication,
Evidence-based Urgent Care. He is a member of the editorial board for the
Journal of Urgent Care Medicine, and develops and reviews continuing
medical education material in urgent care and emergency medicine for a
variety of other publications and organizations.
Eric Ellis, MD - Board Member
Dr. Eric Ellis, is a Board Certified Emergency Medicine Physician. Born and raised in California, Dr. Ellis is a graduate of UCLA and the Emory School of Medicine. He completed his training in Emergency Medicine at the University of Connecticut, where after only a few winters realized there was no place like home. For over 15 years, he practiced Emergency Medicine in the state of California.
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Throughout his career, Dr. Ellis has always been recognized as one of the most efficient and productive physicians in his field. Decreasing patient wait times and the cost of medical care has always been an area of special interest to Dr. Ellis. This combined with an entrepreneurial spirit, desire to serve a small town where he can be part of a community, and truly get to know his patients led to the opening of Lincoln Urgent Care and Granite Bay Urgent Care and soon a new location in West Roseville.
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Over the last 4.5 years, Dr. Ellis, his wife Clara, Diana their office manager, and crew have grown Lincoln Urgent Care and Granite Bay Urgent Care into the premier full service clinics they are today. By using his extensive experience in the ER, Dr. Ellis is able to keep many patients out of the Emergency Department, save them thousands of dollars, and countless hours. Just recently Lincoln Urgent Care was a finalist for Business of the Year in Lincoln by the Chamber of Commerce, and won Best Medical Office, Best Medical Provider, Second Place Customer Service, and Second Place Office Staff in the Best of the Best of Lincoln.
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Dr. Ellis is helped by his amazing wife of 24 years, Clara, who helps with HR, and keeps the clinic feeling like a family. She has been on this journey with Dr. Ellis from the beginning and her contributions are to many to count. She wishes daily that Dr. Ellis would get a personal assistant so she does not have to be one. Together they have two wonderful daughters, one a sophomore at Boise State and the other a senior at Del Oro High School. Dr. Ellis in his free time enjoys golf, mountain biking, skiing, flying, and spending time with his Labrador Retriever, Rosie.
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​Starting from scratch to build his Urgent Care clinics, Dr. Ellis has had to overcome hurdles such as dealing with insurance companies, large organizations such as Sutter, and the myriad of laws that make it harder for him and his staff to provide quality of care they want to provide to their patients. During these challenges it became apparent that Urgent Cares are not even part of the conversation among the people writing these laws. Since then Dr, Ellis has reached out to several Assemblyman to have conversations, and also recently met with 4 different Lobbying firms to get proposals on how they can help CalUca be introduced and become a vital part of the conversation. Through these efforts and others, Dr. Ellis hopes to join the CalUca Board of Directors so that he can help establish Urgent Cares as an entity that needs to be acknowledged by those making healthcare law and the impact those laws will have on Urgent Cares.