PERSONAL STATEMENT

My name is John Ball and I am a nationally certified physician assistant (PA-C) with a specialty in family practice.  I have practiced medicine since 1994, and joined the team of clinicians at Jordan Meadows/Hunter Medical Center in 1998.

I was born in the small Texas of Uvalde, but was raised and attended high school in Austin.  I studied paramedic technology at Austin Community College and worked part time as an emergency medical technician while earning degrees in biology and history at the University of Texas.  There I met and married Caroline Ramirez, an early childhood teacher with an interest in special needs children.

I attended the University of Osteopathic Medicine and Health Sciences from 1992-1994.  I chose this program, based in Des Moines, IA, because it included a year of practical training in specialty clinics from Cedar Park, Texas to Caribou, Maine, and had a reputation for placing clinicians in under served areas.

Thus, my first professional employment was in the Rural Health Center of a remote fishing village in "downeast" Maine, arranged through a contract with the National Health Service Corp.  There I was able to live my dream of serving the needs in an isolated community, while of living on a coastal island, hiking, biking and exploring the coast line by sea kayak on my days off.

When the contract term was up, we drove all over the West looking for a place with the rare combination of professional opportunities, a family friendly environment, and the recreational resources to indulge our interests in skiing, tandem biking, rock climbing, and martial arts.  We bought a duplex in Provo, where we live with our infant son, 2 cats, and 1 rabbit.

I've found practicing family medicine at Jordan Meadows and Hunter to be both rewarding personally and challenging professionally.  It's variety requires constant reeducation to stay current, while the "era of managed care" demands that we do more in less time.  It requires that we balance the limits of the generalist with the value of knowing the patient as a whole individual in an ongoing professional relationship.

The challenge makes it interesting and the people make it fun.

John H. Ball, PA-C