Nicole Hemkes

Dr. Nicole Hemkes is a board‑certified family medicine physician with more than 15 years of clinical experience. She earned a BS in Biology with a minor in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2002, attended the University of South Florida College of Medicine (graduated 2006), and completed a family medicine residency at Wake Forest University in Winston‑Salem, NC in 2009. Over the first decade of her career she practiced in a wide variety of settings – from busy emergency departments and hospitalist roles to traditional outpatient family medicine clinics – serving urban populations in inner‑city Chicago and remote communities in rural Alaska.

In 2018 Dr. Hemkes founded Advocate MD, a Direct Primary Care (DPC) practice serving Madison and surrounding communities. She believes the DPC model restores the essential physician‑patient relationship by removing insurance barriers, offering unlimited same‑day visits, direct phone and email access, and transparent, low‑cost pricing. Her practice emphasizes personalized, unhurried care, preventive health, and patient education, treating each member like a member of her own family.

Dr. Hemkes is committed to community health advocacy, having testified before the Wisconsin Legislature on behalf of Direct Primary Care and actively participating in local health‑care improvement initiatives. She enjoys running, pilates, gardening, and spending time with her two young daughters in Madison.