Family medicine physician Melissa Bishop, M.D., received the California Medical Association (CMA) Compassionate Service Award today at CMA’s House of Delegates in Anaheim. The award honors CMA member physicians who best illustrate the association’s commitment to community and charity care.

Dr. Bishop is a family medicine physician who has worked with medically underserved patients since completing her residency in 1997. For 17 years, she worked with Piedmont Health Services (PHS) a group of federally qualified health centers in central North Carolina. While at PHS, she cared for a rural, low-income population, many of whom were recent immigrants from Latin America. In addition to patient care, she wrote a weekly “Ask the Doctor” column for the Spanish language newspaper, served on the board of the North Carolina Community Health Center Association and conducted numerous quality improvement initiatives.

In 2015, she relocated to Escondido and joined Neighborhood Healthcare (NHC), another federally qualified health center providing care for low-income, medically and socially complex patients in San Diego and Riverside counties. NHC is frequently spotlighted as an organization that has achieved excellent quality outcomes despite the challenges of caring for patients with limited resources.

Dr. Bishop currently serves as NHC’s Medical Director of Quality and she has worked tirelessly to make it easier to take good care of patients by spearheading numerous quality improvement projects including provider education, system redesign and team-based care.

Dr. Bishop has provided care to asylum seekers at the various shelters in San Diego and Tijuana since the arrival of the migrant caravan last fall. Since November 2018 she has screened over 500 people in migrant shelters. In addition, she has volunteered as a medical provider with the Refugee Health Alliance at several migrant shelters located in Tijuana.