About Us
After working together for a decade in a busy primary care practice, Dr Shannon Connolly MD and her colleagues dreamed of creating a healthcare experience where they knew each patient personally and could treat them like family. Traditional insurance-based practice had become unsustainable, with so much time spent doing paperwork to justify insurance billing that the patient's needs became secondary. Our doctors rejected the idea that they could only spend ten minutes with each patient and insurance corporations could dictate whether a patient's treatment was possible or not. They wanted to return to a simpler, relationship-centered way of care. To bring this vision to life, they established Open Arms Primary Care.
Dr Shannon Connolly, MD, FAAFP, DABFP
Education:
Undergraduate: Brown University and Harvard University
Medical School: University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine
Residency: Family Medicine, UCLA
Fellowship: Primary Care Psychiatry, UC Irvine.
About:
Dr. Connolly worked for over a decade leading a multi-site primary care and behavioral health practice before cofounding Open Arms Primary Care to build a practice that follows her vision for how doctors should treat their patients. She feels that all people deserve care from a doctor committed to understanding who their patient is and what is important to them. Her areas of clinical interest include family planning, behavioral health care, gender affirming care, diabetes, and prevention of chronic disease. Outside of work, Dr. Connolly holds leadership positions in the California Academy of Family Physicians and the American Academy of Family Physicians. She does advocacy work around social justice and health equity issues, and has helped develop national medical guidelines for doctors and clinicians.
Dr Connolly was awarded Family Physician of the Year by the California Academy of Family Physicians in 2025.
For fun, Dr. Connolly enjoys trying new foods, hiking with her dog, Sadie, and rescuing animals.
Dr Shayne Poulin, MD
Dr Poulin grew up in Arizona and went to college at the University of Arizona. Prior to medical school, she taught high school chemistry. She then returned to the University of Arizona for medical school. She completed family medicine residency at Boston Medical Center/Boston University. After residency, she became faculty at Boston University School of Medicine and provided care at South Boston Community Health Center.
Dr Poulin moved to California to join Dr Connolly in a practice focused on patient centered primary and reproductive health care. After working together for almost a decade, the doctors founded Open Arms Primary Care to realize the dream of optimizing inclusive patient centered primary care. Dr Poulin is dedicated to making all patients feel welcome by offering gender affirming care, comprehensive reproductive care and behavioral health care.
Dr Poulin is dedicated to improving health care for all by serving in leadership positions in many organizations including the California Academy of Family Physicians. She also completed the UC Irvine Train the Trainer Fellowship in Behavioral Health.
Outside of work she loves spending time with her family--especially outdoors and near the ocean. She also loves crafting and has melded her passion for medicine, teaching, and crafts by creating unique models anatomical for medical education.
Dr Amy Tressan, MD
Dr. Tressan grew up in Los Angeles and completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin, Madison where she worked in the student center handing out condoms and helping folks gain access to safe sex education. This experience inspired her to pursue a career in sexual and reproductive health. She attended Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and completed her residency in family medicine at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She then did a family planning fellowship with the Reproductive Health Access Project in Boston and a second fellowship with Physicians for Reproductive Health Leadership Training Academy.
Dr Tressan has been working with Dr Poulin and Dr Connolly for the last four years at a large multi-site primary care facility before co-founding Open Arms Primary Care. She is most passionate about providing equitable and compassionate, trauma informed, patient-centered care. Her areas of clinical interest include family planning, vasectomy, sex positive care and gender affirming care. She recognizes the layered systems of oppression that people face making health harder to achieve and wants to work actively to face this with her patients using harm reduction principles and shared decision-making. She wants her patients to feel heard, seen and supported. Outside of work, Dr. Tressan is involved in several professional organizations and holds leadership positions at the Reproductive Health Access Project (RHAP), Los Angeles Academy of Family Physicians (LAFP) and the California Academy of Family Physicians (CAFP).
For fun, Dr. Tressan enjoys hiking, dancing, and trying to keep her plants alive!
Customer Voices
Hear from our valued patients.
Dr. Connolly made me feel safe and comfortable through my entire visit. She took time answering all my questions. I didn't feel like she was trying to rush through me. She took her time and gave me the care I needed.
Kylie R.
Costa Mesa
"I am so happy that I found Dr. Connolly for a primary physician. She's awesome, caring, sincere and very friendly. She also very professional of what she do. I'm always satisfied and happy the end of my visit, definitely recommend whoever seeking for a primary physician..."
Tammie N
Orange
★★★★★
★★★★★
Frequently Asked Questions
What is direct primary care?
Direct primary care is a model where patients pay a low monthly membership fee that covers all care, bypassing insurance. Unlike insurance-based health care where many doctors see 25 or 30 patients a day, direct primary care practices allow for doctors to care for a smaller population of patients which means they have more time to spend with each patient.
Do you accept insurance? Why not?
We do not bill health insurance and a membership to our practice is different from health insurance. At Open Arms Primary Care, we believe that your healthcare should be simple, personal, and focused entirely on you — not on insurance companies.
Traditional medical offices spend enormous amounts of time and money dealing with insurance paperwork, billing codes, and approval processes. This system often forces doctors to see more patients in less time and limits what kind of care they can provide.
We’ve chosen a different path. By working directly with you instead of insurance companies, we can:
Spend more time with you — your visits aren’t rushed, and you can get same-day or next-day appointments.
Be available when you need us — by text, email, or phone, without copays or surprise bills.
Focus on your health, not on billing codes — every medical decision is based on what’s best for you, not what an insurance company will approve.
Offer transparent, affordable pricing — you always know exactly what care will cost with us
You can still use your insurance for things like specialist visits, hospital care, or medications — but your primary care stays direct, simple, and patient-centered.
Can I use my HSA to pay for membership?
You should definitely consult a legal or tax professional for personalized advice, but starting in January 2026, you can use your Health Savings Account to cover direct primary care membership costs up to $150 a month. Employers may also now cover DPC membership as a work benefit.
So can I cancel my health insurance?
We recommend having health insurance to pay for ER and hospital visits, specialty care, and tests done outside our facility.
What is your mascot?
Our mascot is Ollie the Octopus. He's a friendly little guy with a lot of arms who symbolizes our welcoming approach and ability to take care of many aspects of your health.