About Dr. Brown

Dr. Brown is a board-certified dermatologist who started a solo direct pay practice in 2011. She graduated from the College of William and Mary in Virginia in 1980 with majors in biology and music, and from Eastern Virginia School of Medicine in 1988. She then did six years of residency, becoming board certified in dermatology in 1993, and in internal medicine in 1995. 

Dr. Brown then worked in a faculty practice group in Baltimore (Johns Hopkins Bayview Physicians), with part-time teaching appointments at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In 1997, she and her husband with their two young children moved from Maryland to Coos Bay, Oregon to join a multi-specialty group, practicing both specialties. Her husband Jack had also left a senior management position in Baltimore to start his own IT company. In 2000, Dr. Brown limited her practice to dermatology.

Over 13 years with the group practice, arrangements with third party payers became more complex and difficult, making it almost impossible to continue practicing medicine as she saw fit. Dr. Brown wanted more control over the way she practiced medicine, and felt that physicians should not allow billing and diagnosis codes to affect or control the practice of medicine, and also that fees should be predictable and reasonable. Because of all this, in 2011 she opened her own solo direct pay dermatology practice, Oregon Coast Dermatology. It operated free from third-party payers such as insurance companies, Medicare, and Medicaid. For almost eight years, Dr. Brown worked directly for her patients by getting rid of the middlemen and posting prices in public, based on time spent with the patient. 

In 2019 she closed her practice in order to move with her husband to their property in Montana. They chose to have more time for life outside of medicine, including more time for family and outdoor recreation. She has continued to help other physicians succeed in third-party-free practices. She has also kept up with her specialty of dermatology and has opened a part-time mobile direct pay dermatology practice. She is a director on the board of the Frontier Institute, and stays involved with the Free Market Medical Association.