PRR RX for Success: Dr. Roger Gallant

Dr. Roger Gallant co-founded a healthcare clinic in rural Northern California. When a nonprofit, community-based healthcare organization began administering the clinic’s Medi-Cal program, Dr. Gallant was asked to enroll in the Physician Retraining & Reentry program to retrain as a primary care physician.

With nearly 30 years of experience in both emergency and lifestyle medicine, Dr. Gallant’s practice at the Blue Stone Health and Wellness clinic in Weimer already included a mix of preventive, chronic and urgent care. Retraining with PRR gave Dr. Gallant the opportunity to practice primary care medicine at an optimal level that not only satisfied Medi-Cal’s provider requirements but armed him with the latest treatment options to better serve patients.

“The information I learned from PRR was useful in that there were some lessons that reinforced what I was already doing, but also gave me some more current practices that helped me improve the care that I’m giving to my patients,” Dr. Gallant said.

When Dr. Gallant was in high school, he took on a deep interest in science. Coming from parents who taught him to prioritize being kind and caring, Dr. Gallant identified medicine as a career that allowed him to combine science with his interest in looking out for others.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in biology at Loma Linda University, he earned his medical degree from Loma Linda University School of Medicine. During his early career, he worked in hospital emergency departments before pivoting to practice lifestyle medicine. Teaching people to take better care of themselves by making changes to how they eat, exercise, sleep and live prevents disease and helps people improve existing conditions, like hypertension and diabetes.

Adding primary care to his already full menu of medical treatments allows Dr. Gallant to offer the people he serves — including low-income families — a healthier life. He is grateful to Partnership HealthPlan of California for introducing him to PRR. And he appreciates that PRR’s online, autonomous curriculum allowed him to retrain as a primary care physician at the fast pace he desired.

“For physicians who are looking to either enhance their practice or change their role in medicine, this is an excellent program,” he added.