Our team

Joshua Lumsden (he/him) brings expertise, empathy, and a forward-thinking approach to queer-affirming primary care. A proud Seattleite since 2003, Joshua was born and raised in Southwest Washington, and has built his career as a trusted healthcare provider for the LGBTQIA+ community.  As a physician assistant who specializes in queer affirming primary care for adults, he blends his evidence-based clinical skills with an approach that is candid and compassionate.   Prior to working as a physician associate, he worked in mental health and developmental disabilities case management for eleven years.

Joshua earned his Masters in Clinical Health Services in Physician Assistant Studies from the University of Washington in 2016. He began his clinical career in adult internal medicine at Virginia Mason Medical Center, where he practiced for eight years, while concurrently working in psychiatry at Sound Mental Health for four years. Fluent in Spanish, he has used his language skills in clinical settings.

Joshua’s clinical passions include HIV treatment and prevention, gender-affirming hormone therapy, and optimizing health through exercise, fitness, and nutrition. He has completed advanced coursework through the World Professional Association of Transgender Health and has published on PrEP implementation. At Virginia Mason, he led pioneering initiatives on suicide prevention, PrEP initiation, and expanding acccess to gender-affirming care.

A dynamic educator and advocate, Joshua frequently lectures nationally and locally on HIV care and gender-affirming health. As President of the Washington Academy of Physician Assistants and co-host of The PA Playbook podcast, he champions professional growth and advocacy for the physician assistant community. In 2022, he was honored with the inaugural Carol Verga Advanced Practice Provider of the Year award from Virginia Mason Franciscan Health.

Joshua’s patient care philosophy is science based, and focuses on preventing chronic conditions, while emphasizing patient autonomy.   He emphasizes creating a safe, sex-positive space where patients are encouraged to make decisions that align with their personal goals and values.

Outside the clinic, Joshua brings the same passion to his personal life. A dedicated weightlifter who loves a challenge, he competed in an amateur bodybuilding competition in 2022. When he’s not in the gym, you’ll find him experimenting in the kitchen, attending the opera, or planning his next travel adventure. An advocate at heart, Joshua also engages in state and federal legislative work to advance PA practice and transgender health rights. He shares his Seattle home with his longtime partner and their charming geriatric chihuahua, Rocco.

For patients of Joshua’s from other clinics who wish to follow him to Capitol Hill Medical, or for current CHM patients who wish to transfer to Joshua, please sign up to be contacted here.

Please note: Joshua will only be in-network with one insurance plan: Premera Blue Cross, and will bill Premera for his primary care services. For all other patients with other plans, he will only be available for as direct primary care (DPC) provider. Read about DPC here. If you have Premera insurance, or if you are interested in starting direct primary care with Joshua, please sign up below.

Thomas Thomson (he/him) is an adult primary care nurse practitioner trained in primary care, queer and transgender healthcare, HIV medical care, and harm reduction medicine. He completed graduate studies at Yale University’s School of Nursing, where he graduated with a concentration in Gender and Sexuality Health Justice. After four years in the VA healthcare system, he is extremely excited to be joining Capitol Hill Medical.

Prior to beginning his nursing career, Tom worked as an HIV prevention counselor/tester and medical case manager at Mazzoni Center in Philadelphia, a groundbreaking community health organization dedicated to empowering and caring for people living with HIV/AIDS and providing affirming and excellent medical and mental health care for LGBTQIA+ people throughout the mid-Atlantic states. He completed his initial training as a registered nurse at Philadelphia’s Thomas Jefferson University, and before moving on to graduate school, he served as the nurse manager for the Jonathan Lax Treatment Center, an HIV primary care clinic in Philadelphia with a strong history of grass-roots activism.

As a queer nurse practitioner, Tom is deeply committed to advocating for and working alongside other people within Seattle’s LGBTQIA+ communities in the effort to provide and normalize excellent, affirming primary healthcare. He cares for patients of all sexual orientations and genders and provides gender affirming care for transgender and non-binary folks including hormone therapy. He also provides primary care for people living with HIV. 

Outside of patient care, Tom enjoys hiking throughout the Pacific Northwest, seeing all manner of live music (and being a music nerd,but not an insufferable one) and a more limited manner of live sporting events (Storm/Reign/Sounders games), and doing street medic work at protests and for mutual aid projects.

Thomas will be in-network with all major commercial plans, but will only be open to current CHM patients who wish to transfer care. For CHM patients who wish to transfer care to Thomas, please sign up below. Please note, though, that you will not be contacted until May for scheduling. For all other patients, please check back periodically to find out when he is open to new patients.

Board certified,
American Board of Internal Medicine

Board eligible,
American Board of Integrative Medicine

Dr. Rongitsch (she/her) is a physician, board-certified in internal medicine and board-eligible in integrative medicine. She grew up in Minnesota and graduated from University of Minnesota Medical School.  She completed her residency in internal medicine at Virginia Mason Medical Center. From there she worked in public health at a community clinic, caring for medically complex patients for close to a decade. 

In recent years Dr. Rongitsch has been a partner at Capitol Hill Medical where she has had the privilege to care for LGBTQ patients (and allies) in a safe space.  She strives to provide thoughtful, evidence-informed care that is respectful of all gender identities and sexual orientations. 

Throughout her career, Dr. Rongitsch has been teaching residents and medical students from Virginia Mason, Swedish, and University of Washington. She is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians (FACP). For several years running, (2015-2021) Dr. Rongitsch has been named a Seattle Metropolitan Top Doctor.  

In addition to LGTBQ-health, Dr. Rongitsch has had a long-standing interest in holistic medicine. She has spent years studying meditation, mind-body medicine, herbal medicine, and some functional medicine. She has formalized this education by completing a two year fellowship for physicians in integrative medicine through the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine-University of Arizona.

Dr. Rongitsch is now offering integrative medicine care-- a deep dive into a patient’s health concern(s) that pulls in all natural healing modalities. She believes that we all possess the potential for healing and that food is medicine.  She is willing to meet patients wherever they may be in their healing process. She tries to offer natural remedies and holistic options in addition to standard evidence-based conventional medicine whenever possible. Learn more about Integrative Medicine here.

Dr. Rongitsch has had many years experience working with trans* patients and considers this to be the great privilege of her career. She prescribes gender-affirming hormones on the basis of informed consent,  primary care post-op care following gender affirming surgeries, and integrative care for trans* and gender-variant patients.

Update March 2025: Dr. Rongitsch will be leaving Capitol Hill Medical in June 2025. Please sign up below to receive updates on her next chapter.

Board certified,
American Board of Internal Medicine

Vy Chu (pronounced "vee choo"; he/him) has committed his career to the service of our community as one of the founding members of Capitol Hill Medical. He grew up in McLean, Virginia, a suburb of D.C., and attended college at Duke University in North Carolina. Upon graduation, he enjoyed a few years working as an emergency medical technician and medical assistant.

He received his M.D. from the University of Washington and completed his residency in Primary Care Internal Medicine at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, Washington. He is board certified in Internal Medicine. He is a Clinical Instructor at the University of Washington School of Medicine and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians (FACP).

Vy's passion for the primary care of the queer community originated during residency, when he completed a rotation at the San Francisco City Clinic, a downtown public health clinic on the forefront of gender-affirming care, HIV care, and STD medicine. His experiences here led directly to his founding of Capitol Hill Medical in 2008. Several years into practice, he was invited by the UW School of Medicine to revamp and teach an elective course on LGBTQ healthcare disparities, which eventually became an integral component of the School’s LGBTQ Health Pathway curriculum. Vy has been a guest expert on Dan Savage’s “Lovecast” several times.

Update 03/03/2025:

Dr. Chu is transitioning his practice to direct primary care (DPC) on July 1st, 2025. In anticipation of the transition, he has opened his practice to new patients who are interested in signing up for the eventual direct primary care transition. Read all about direct primary care here. Under DPC, patients are billed a monthly fee ($95) for primary care services (this fee is not covered by insurance, but is FSA-eligible). Prospective patients who are interested in direct primary care with Dr. Chu are welcome to sign up now.