Personalized care for extraordinary lives

Atypical Care is a private, specialty healthcare agency in Richmond, Va., founded by Lisa Brownlee Johnson, a nurse practitioner who was born and raised in Richmond, where she continues live with her husband and their sons.

After nearly 20 years as a nurse, including almost a decade as a primary care provider, Lisa finally came to the realization that the most impactful way she could help improve a person's health is to start with the person. The way to really accomplish better health is to focus on the unique needs, circumstances, and gifts, of each individual person you serve.

Out of this realization came the Atypical Care mission: To provide personalized care for extraordinary lives. This mission reflects lived experience, including working as a primary care provider throughout the COVID Pandemic. For Lisa, there was something lifechanging about continuing to serve in person during COVID. It was the kind of experience that helps clarify priorities and appreciate the fragile nature of human life.

Lisa, who once worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, graduated with honors, earning separate bachelor's degrees in mass communications and nursing from Virginia Commonwealth University in the 1990s and early 2000s. She later went on to earn her master's of science in adult primary care nursing from VCU, where she graduated with a 4.0 grade-point average in 2014.

While continuing her love for primary care, Lisa set out in late 2023 on a path of entrepreneurship, navigating a course to establish a way to provide services that seemed to be missing in traditional healthcare. Services that take more time and attention than our current healthcare model is able to provide.

Thus, Atypical Care was established: A small, nimble, locally owned, highly skilled, and devoted agency, with services including functional medicine, dementia screening, insomnia therapy, mental health skills training, and more.

Each service is personalized and specifically geared toward making a clear and sustainable contribution to preservation of function and quality of life.

Lisa Brownlee Johnson NP is licensed as a registered nurse in Virginia through the Virginia Board of Nursing. She also is licensed as a nurse practitioner in the state of Virginia, where she holds prescriptive authority and autonomous practice designation through the Joint Boards of Nursing and Medicine under the Virginia Department of Health Professions. Her certifications include adult-gerontological primary care through the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP); RN Case Management, through the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC); Certified Geriatric Care Professional, through Evergreen Certifications. She is a certified instructor for Adult Mental Health First Aid, through the National Council for Mental Wellbeing. She is a certified dementia practitioner (CDP) through the National Council for Certified Dementia Practitioners. She also is a functional medicine practitioner and member of the Institute for Functional Medicine.