Meet your Doctor

Hi,

Welcome to Vertical Health Direct Primary Care. My name is Omar Merchant. I was born in Houston, Texas and have lived in all the great Texan cities: Houston, Dallas, and Austin. I completed my undergraduate education at the University of Texas at Austin, and then settled in Houston where I went to medical school at Baylor College of Medicine. I stayed at Baylor for my residency training in Internal Medicine and later joined their faculty as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine. The hospital I practiced at took care of some of the most medically complex patients in the country, often after other hospitals had run out of options. After seeing how painful and often futile care at that stage of disease can be for patients and their families, I decided to pivot towards a different type of practice. I wanted to focus on preventing that level of suffering in the patients I cared for, I wanted to keep people healthy longer, and develop more personal relationships with my patients.

In modern health systems, very few people are fortunate enough to have someone they call “my doctor.” Complicated phone trees, rushed appointments, and rotating pools of doctors involved in your care lead to frustration and poor quality. Trust has eroded, and compassionate care has become increasingly difficult to find.

Direct Primary Care aims to bring that tradition back. By providing patients with their doctor’s direct line, urgent care visits become unnecessary. Care can be delivered based on patient convenience, specialists can be engaged when needed, but the primary doctor remains your primary point of contact, your trusted advocate and reliable resource in times of need. Patient’s don’t have to think about how much their visit will cost or if insurance will cover it. All interactions with their primary care doctor are covered in the membership. This effectively eliminates barriers to care, decreases cost, and brings back trust.

Join us and let’s Stay Vertical together!