Care that follows the patient, not the department.

This is not a staffing solution.
It is a care architecture.

VertiCare MD is a vertically integrated healthcare organization. Most hospitals contract each stage of care to a different vendor, and the handoffs between them are where time, quality, and patients are lost. We are built the other way. One physician-led group owns the full path, from the ambulance to the living room, so accountability and the care team move with the patient. The result is faster throughput, fewer readmissions, and a care experience patients remember.

Our services For clinicians

01EMS response

02Emergency care

03Inpatient care

04Transitional care

05Remote monitoring

What we do

Five connected service lines. One clinical organization.

VertiCare MD is built as one vertically integrated group that owns every stage of the acute episode, so the care team, the information, and the accountability move with the patient instead of resetting at each handoff.

01 · EMS Medical Direction

EMS

VertiCare MD physicians serve as clinical medical directors for emergency medical services agencies in our partner communities, a role focused entirely on prehospital care quality, paramedic education, and patient outcomes. Transport destination decisions are made by patients and paramedics under established clinical protocols and patient rights, without direction or influence from our medical direction role. What we invest in is different: building emergency departments where EMS professionals are treated as clinical partners, welcomed for education and career development, and given the professional respect most hospital systems never think to offer. That relationship is earned through culture and conduct, not encoded in any protocol, contract, or directive.

02 · Emergency Medicine

Emergency Medicine

VertiCare Emergency Medicine replaces the national staffing model with a physician-owned, locally accountable group whose incentives are aligned with hospital performance rather than shift coverage. Our physicians and advanced practice providers staff the emergency department with direct communication channels to the inpatient medicine team, enabling earlier admission decisions, reduced boarding time, and a patient experience that reflects a cohesive clinical organization rather than a rotating cast of contractors.

03 · Hospital Medicine

Hospital Medicine

VertiCare Hospital Medicine provides inpatient coverage as the direct clinical extension of the same physician organization staffing the emergency department, closing the organizational gap between admission and floor care that drives length-of-stay inefficiency in most hospitals. Our hospitalist team engages at the point of the admission decision, not after a completed workup, and begins discharge planning from day one, with a care pathway that includes early, safe transition toward home for appropriate patients.

04 · Transitional Care

Transitional Care

VertiCare Transitional Care extends the hospital's reach into the home for qualifying patients who can complete their recovery safely outside an inpatient bed. Through coordinated discharge, scheduled paramedic visits, and telemedicine physician oversight, patients recover at home with the same clinical team that treated them in the hospital. Beds are freed for the next admission without adding physical capacity, and the transition itself is managed rather than left to chance.

05 · Remote Monitoring

Remote Monitoring

VertiCare Remote Monitoring follows patients for 30 days after discharge, tracking vital signs, weight, oxygen saturation, and symptom trends every day for those leaving our transitional care program or a standard inpatient stay. Defined alert thresholds trigger clinical intervention before deterioration becomes a readmission, protecting patients through the highest-risk window of recovery and extending the physician-patient relationship well past the hospital doors.

Leadership

Founded and led by a physician who has run this system at scale.

VertiCare MD was founded by Kenneth A. Scheppke, MD, FAEMS, a board-certified emergency medicine and EMS physician. Over his career he has built and led emergency and hospital medicine groups, directed EMS systems for major agencies, and served in senior state public health leadership, including as a state Deputy Secretary for Health.

He founded VertiCare MD to bring that same vertically integrated, physician-led model to hospitals and health systems that want one team accountable for the entire care continuum.

Physician owned. Physician led. Based in Florida, serving health systems across the Southeast and into Texas.

Physician-led care team