Orca Pediatrics and Dr. Huang
About Direct Primary Care and Orca Pediatrics
Frustrated with productivity based medicine allowing for only 5-10 minutes with patients, Dr. Huang became drawn to the model of direct primary care which takes out the intermediary of insurance, allowing for a sole focus on patients. It eliminates the hassles of coding, billing, and paperwork meant to serve large healthcare systems instead of directly serving families.
Direct primary care is reminiscent of the time when the doctor was your neighbor, your friend, and someone who truly knew you and wasn’t rushing off to see the next patient. Dr. Huang believes this type of healthcare is what families deserve and what she would want for her own child.
Direct Primary Care
Direct access to your doctor via text, email or phone
Same day or next day appointments
Relaxed, extended appointment times up to 30-60 minutes
Minimal to no wait time in the waiting room
No hidden costs, no co-pays and no co-insurance
Your doctor has a smaller patient panel size (less than 300) and knows you well
Your doctor is flexible and works with your schedule
Traditional Insurance
Difficulty contacting the doctor directly; Navigating a phone tree
Several months wait to get in for a well visit or sports physical
Rushed, 5-7 minute visits that only address 1-2 problems
Average 20-30 minute wait time
Provider has 2,000 patients on average and may not recall your name or medical history
You have to take time off work or kids miss school to see the doctor
No available appointments, which then require visits to the urgent care
Dr. Maria Huang
Born in Chapel Hill, NC (go Tarheels!) and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, I attended Case Western Reserve University for undergraduate and medical school. I graduated summa cum laude, majored in chemistry and psychology, and achieved Alpha Omega Alpha distinction in medical school. After decades in the Midwest, I headed to the West Coast to specialize in pediatrics and complete my residency at Seattle Children’s Hospital. I was board certified in 2009. Following an adventurous year working in Christchurch, New Zealand, I settled in Olympia and have been working in the South Sound area since 2011.
I find great joy and fulfillment in building trusting relationships with families and watching my patients grow and thrive. I am grateful for the opportunity to share in medical decision making with parents — I understand that as a parent myself, we are all trying to do the best we can for our kids.
“I value evidence-based medicine and seek to provide high quality, compassionate care to families where they feel seen and heard.”
—Dr. Maria Huang
Dr. Huang’s Philosophy
Medicine is a science, but it is also an art. Some questions have one right answer and others have several. There is room among competent doctors for differing professional approaches — this is what we call “practice style”. I consider myself something of a minimalist. I have immense faith in the body’s natural ability to heal, and in the immune system’s efficacy in fighting infection. I believe that the power of medicine should be used very judiciously and only when there is a firm evidence base to do so.
At the same time, when a technology is firmly proven and established, I advocate strongly for its adoption. I consider vaccines to be one of mankind’s greatest inventions, and I follow the standard vaccine schedule recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the CDC. If parents or patients do not agree with our interpretation of the scientific literature about vaccines, you may not be a good fit for Orca Pediatrics. However, I will support each family in finding an alternative vaccine schedule with which you are comfortable. Please realize, I will aim to have your child vaccinated as close to the recommended schedule as possible.
Just as doctors have different styles, so do parents. So if I find one of my recommendations met with hesitancy by a parent, I respect that in their effort to do the best for their child, they simply came to a different conclusion than I did. In these situations, I use my expertise alongside the parent’s unmatched knowledge of and love for their child to try to find a solution that works best for everyone.
Dr. Huang’s Personal Bio
I am married to Jon Penoyar, a Washington native and local family medicine hospitalist. We have a daughter Grace, an avid reader, writer, and violinist for SOGO. We have a flock of hens that Grace adores and tries, from time to time, to dress up as various characters. The size of the flock varies with the appetites of the local redtail hawks and coyotes. We have succeeded in teaching two chickens to ride the handlebars of Grace’s bike. Please don’t offer us a rooster: we will politely decline.
My interests include gardening, especially flowers. Jon’s interests include building me more and more planter boxes, and shoveling in large quantities of dirt and mulch. I make fresh arrangements in season, and have a burgeoning interest in drying flowers so I can keep it up all year long. As a family we love travel and the outdoors, especially backpacking, though in recent years the ground seems to be getting colder and rockier so we may soon hand that hobby off to Grace. We make sack lunches for the homeless every Sunday, and volunteer at the Tumwater Food Bank. Indoors I like to spend my time reading, my most recent obsession being Louise Penny, and if you want to talk about this in clinic the appointment may be extended indefinitely.