Built on Excellence, Integrity, Connection, and Community
Get to know our founder,
Dr. Elise Donnelly
Dr. Elise Donnelly has a clear memory of deciding, at seven years old, that she was going to be a physician. It is a strange thing for a seven-year-old to know. But she loved science, she loved people, and even then she understood that some careers let you do both.
She earned a scholarship to the University of Arizona and majored in psychology, drawn to how the environments people live in shape the health they end up with. While completing her pre-medical coursework she worked as a physical therapy assistant, teaching patients how to move through their own recovery. That job cured her of being shy with patients, permanently. One of them, a neurosurgeon, admitted he was nervous while she took his blood pressure.
She earned her medical degree from the University of Arizona and completed her family medicine residency at Phoenix Baptist Hospital, a community hospital serving an underserved area. Family medicine residents were the only residents in the building, which meant covering the ICU and taking every delivery that came through the door. She had been part of more than a hundred births by the time she graduated in 2014.
After residency, she and her husband moved to New Zealand, where she spent a year as a general practitioner in a rural town with no CT scanner within an hour's drive, relying on her hands and her history-taking rather than a machine down the hall. They returned to Arizona to be near family and put down roots, and she spent more than ten years with a large Arizona health system, building the whole-person approach she is known for and earning a 4.9-star rating across more than 300 patient reviews.
Dr. Donnelly practices evidence-based medicine with a detective's curiosity. She asks about sleep, supplements, and the data on your smartwatch. She reserves judgment until she has examined you herself, and she will tell you plainly what she thinks is happening and what she recommends you do about it. When you need a specialist, she usually has a specific name in mind and follows up after you have been seen. She thinks of the role as something like a healthcare Sherpa, guiding you through terrain she has crossed many times before.
Outside the office, Dr. Donnelly is a mom to two boys, ages five and nine. On the days medicine is hard, going home and playing with them is what resets her. If she had not become a physician, she says she would have been a teacher, which anyone who has sat through one of her explanations has probably already guessed.
Why Clarity MD exists
Dr. Donnelly built Clarity MD because good primary care takes time, and the traditional system does not have any to spare. A twenty-minute visit once a year is a lost opportunity. Care that only responds to acute problems misses the chance to prevent them. And when patients cannot reach their own doctor, they end up at an urgent care with someone who does not know their history, which too often begins a chain of referrals, tests, and procedures that never addresses the original problem.
She has seen what happens when someone slows down and looks again. A patient once came to Dr. Donnelly for a pre-operative visit before back surgery. She had been in pain a long time, had been seen at a nationally known clinic more than once, and everyone agreed it was her back. Dr. Donnelly asked her where the pain was, when it bothered her, and what made it worse, then examined her carefully. What she found did not match the plan. The pain was coming from her knee. She asked the patient for a favor: see an orthopedic surgeon before going through with the operation. The surgeon told her it was one of the worst knees he had seen in his career. She had a knee replacement instead, and the pain went away.
Dr. Donnelly does not tell that story to sound heroic. She tells it because she did nothing unusual. She took a history, did an exam, and thought about it independently rather than inheriting someone else's conclusion. That is ordinary medicine, and it only requires one thing the system rarely allows: time.
Our Mission
Clarity MD exists to give people one physician who has the time to know them, the honesty to tell them the truth, and the availability to be reached when it counts. In a world of endless health information and very little clarity, we want to be the trusted voice you can actually get on the phone.
Why "Clarity MD"
There has never been more health information available and never been less clarity about what any of it means for you. Influencers. Search results. AI chatbots. A neighbor who read something. All of it confident, none of it about you.
Dr. Donnelly named the practice for the thing she believes people are actually short on. Not information. Clarity. One physician who knows your history, tells you plainly what she thinks is happening, and helps you decide what to do next.
What Clarity MD is built on
EXCELLENCE
Clarity MD is built on one standard: excellence. A patient doctor relationship modeled on the past, using cutting edge evidence to optimize your health for the future.
INTEGRITY
We want to serve our community well, and integrity is how Dr. Donnelly does it. Every patient gets her full attention, honest answers, and the same standard of care she would want for her own family.
CONNECTION
Dr. Donnelly sees her patients as partners. She listens, she remembers, and she stays in your corner as your health changes over the years. Many of her patients bring in their spouses, their parents, and their children, which lets her care for a whole family and understand each person better for it.
COMMUNITY
When you walk into Clarity MD, we want you to feel welcomed, safe, and at home. There is real comfort in being cared for close to home, by someone who knows you and knows this city. Dr. Donnelly wants to be a doctor who shows up for Scottsdale, in the exam room and out in the community.
How she practices…
Longer appointments
Your annual exam is head-to-toe and unhurried. Your follow-ups are long enough to finish the conversation. Dr. Donnelly asks about sleep, supplements, and your smartwatch data because the answer is often in the parts a rushed visit skips.
Direct access to your physician
Message Dr. Donnelly through our simple patient app, and she will get back to you. When you need to be seen, same-day or next-day appointments are available for urgent concerns.
Small on purpose
Clarity MD is one location with a deliberately limited number of members. Everything above only works because the practice stays small enough for it to work.
"She listens to your actual concerns, and if there is any way she can help you, she will go out of her way to make your day better."
— Alan T., Google Review