Morgan Stacey

I began my career in hepatology in 2018 as a nurse practitioner at the University of Kentucky Hepatology, where I saw pre-transplant patients, the sickest patients, and performed paracentesis procedures to remove ascites fluid from the bellies of liver disease patients. In 2022, I was approached by the emergency department and specialty pharmacy to lead a groundbreaking emergency department Hepatitis C initiative. I became the liver clinical advisor for a team of pharmacists who rotated around the clock through the ER, identifying and treating every patient with Hep C while they waited for their x-rays or other care. The goal was to remove barriers for patients who don't have primary care and use the ER as their main healthcare, ensuring they left with Hep C treatment in hand. Because we were doing so well with Hepatitis C, in 2025 we expanded to include fatty liver treatment when the first-ever medication, Resmetirom by Madrigal, came to market. This was a big deal because before that, patients were just being monitored until they got cirrhosis, and now we had something that could reverse the scarring. Our clinic morphed into treating both fatty liver and Hep C, and we grew to 2 nurse practitioners and 7 pharmacists - all mid-level providers, no MDs, running this multidisciplinary team. Most recently, we've evolved into a liver triage clinic, working closely with Hepatology to offload their workload by going through their referrals and pulling appropriate patients to get them seen within a week or two. Over the years, we've presented at ASLD, the International Liver Meeting, with oral presentations and posters. I'm most proud of getting the title of Liver Disease Clinical Advisor - it's hard in corporate hospitals to get titles and recognition because everything's based on how many years you've worked there. I was already acting as that leader, but finally getting recognized by the university with that title was what I was looking for.