Research Program Assistant Jobs in Santa Maria, CA

Medical Oncologist

Independent, physician-owned practice  —  California Central Coast

PCR Oncology, Inc. — an independent, physician-owned medical oncology practice in Arroyo Grande — is seeking a board-certified or board-eligible medical oncologist to join our three-provider group. After more than thirty years, one of our founding physicians is beginning to plan toward retirement, and we are looking for the right colleague to step into an established, financially sound practice on California’s Central Coast — with a genuine path to ownership.

A real path to ownership

This is a partnership opportunity, not an indefinite employed role — and, unlike many independent practices, ownership here is not gated behind a large capital buy-in. The path to partner is earned principally by doing the work well. Nor will you be left to learn the business alone: our founding physician will stay involved through the transition to pass on how the practice actually runs — its finances, its operations, and its research program — so that you step into ownership equipped to lead it.

A genuine quality of life

We built this practice around the lives we wanted to live — not the other way around:

• Home for coffee with family most mornings, and home for the evening more than 95% of the time.
• A four-day work week is entirely workable here.
• An excellent hospitalist program keeps inpatient demands light; our complete independence keeps hospital obligations to a minimum.
• The office is two miles from the beach.

A tradition of innovation

For an independent community practice, we punch well above our weight:

• The first cancer research program and the first tumor board in the county.
• An active clinical research program — supported, along with medical social-work consults for patients, by our affiliated nonprofit, the Jacqualyn Palchak Cancer Fund.
• A patient navigation team of four, all certified as navigators by the American Cancer Society.
• A Medically Integrated Dispensary, allowing us to dispense oral anti-neoplastics in-house wherever insurance permits.
• A lymphedema screening program.

Built to last as an independent practice

Independent practices face real structural headwinds — not-for-profit, hospital-based programs enjoy long-standing federal advantages such as 340B drug pricing and facility fees. We have met that challenge directly. By building our own ancillary services — in-house dispensing, navigation, and lymphedema screening — we capture revenue that, in a hospital setting, is absorbed by the larger organization. Here it stays in the practice and partially offsets the loss of those 340B and facility advantages.

How we practice

• Humane scheduling: 60-minute new-patient consults, 30-minute follow-ups.
• A stable, expert staff with a median tenure of more than ten years — people who already know how to get authorizations, approvals, transfusions, and results, fast.
• Real control over your panel. The feeling of being buried by volume is, by design, largely absent here.

And a place worth living

Arroyo Grande sits on California’s Central Coast in San Luis Obispo County — a temperate, unhurried stretch of coastline between Santa Barbara and Monterey, with beaches, wine country, and the outdoors at the doorstep, and a college town’s culture without a big city’s pace.

A personal note

After more than thirty years building this practice, I can tell you the things that matter most don’t fit neatly in a job posting: being home for coffee every morning, working with staff who know the work so well that the hard logistics simply get handled, and practicing the medicine you believe is right without an institution looking over your shoulder. If any of that resonates, I’d be glad to tell you more.

— David Palchak, MD

To apply

We would welcome a conversation. Please send a CV and a brief note to office@pcroncology.com, or call us at 805.474.9143.

Qualifications: Board-certified or board-eligible in medical oncology; Eligible for license to practice in California.