Letter to the Editor
Hello, friends!
This is the first week of my health column for many of you, so hopefully the rest of my health column veterans of the last nearly four years will bear with me while I introduce myself to others in northwest Kansas. I am a midlevel provider who has been working and living in rural Kansas for over 30 years, and started a Direct Primary Care clinic in Logan in June of 2018, with the help of the Dane G. Hansen Foundation and city leaders. This model of health system is right up the alley of rural America, as many of us as rural providers already offer medical help in the grocery store, at ball games, and with house calls to our ailing patients. To many rural providers, caring for our patients is a calling and not just a job.
Basically, I like to describe this kind of model as being like a co-op for health care. Your monthly dues pay for all office visits, house calls, wholesale priced laboratory testing and brings lots of value for the average person. A year’s worth of membership typically costs less than a single month of comprehensive health insurance.
We recommend that every patient carry catastrophic health insurance at least, in case of trauma or major medical issue. But you can reduce your healthcare costs by raising deductibles with DPC, and most accountants will tell you our dues are “medical services” on your taxes, deductible with the other medical costs.
Our services are personal, as we are able to take time to get to know our patients, and aren’t limited by the 10 minute time allotment of most office visits in fee-for-service medicine. We treat the whole person, not just the diagnosis of the moment. This allows us to keep you well, because we see the early signs of disease and are able to take care of it before you are diagnosed with a heart attack or diabetes, and damage has already been done.
The “direct” means a relationship between you and your provider, not with an insurance company as the go-between. We do work with people’s insurance, helping with prior authorizations, and we also work with your own hospital of choice to coordinate your care.
Look for more information about Ad Astra DPC, LLC @ Palco Clinic on our Facebook page! There will be more information about DPC in weeks and months to come in this column. In the meantime, we wanted you to know we are here at 505 Main Street in Palco, and we would welcome a phone call (785-737-2011) or e-mail (adastradpc@gmail.com) with any questions you may have. We offer excellent evidence-based medical care which is affordable to anyone, with our sliding scale based on income.
Not to bring this column to a depressing subject, but suicide has touched my life with a patient and friend of mine recently. I feel it is worth visiting this dark reality, as it is another epidemic that is facing our nation. This man had a servant’s heart and tried to help anyone he could in the wake of disasters and mass shootings throughout his adult life. He was a victim of the Greensburg tornado, where I worked for nine years as a provider before, during and after the tornado. After that time, he decided he owed the world the same help we received after the EF-5 tornado wiped out 95% of the town. He showed up to support others at Sandy Hook with his service dog the day after the mass shooting occurred. He was in Japan to mark the anniversary of the tsunami that took so many lives. I can’t count the situations he volunteered to help in over the years. He helped thousands of people after tornadoes and natural disasters in the years following the Greensburg tornado. He did it because others helped us.
He was surrounded by friends in his life, and the Stars of Hope (www.starsofhopeusa.org) project benefited from thousands of volunteer hours from from this man. But the trauma of years of service proved to be too much for his psyche. And recently, he took his own life because of the anxiety and PTSD that plagued him.
There are thousands of stories of thousands of people who felt that there wasn’t enough hope in this world to continue living their lives. And the most important thing any of us can do is to reach out to others around you. We never know how people are suffering inside. In fact, I believe we should all be willing to approach those around us as though they are struggling with some facet of their lives. We should reach out when you haven’t seen someone for a time that is longer than usual. We should look up from our devices and into the eyes of our neighbors. We should take a moment to pick up the phone and call the person who crosses your mind throughout the day. And we should stop being a part of the negative attitudes and words shared in social media and at coffee hour in your local cafes. The words we say matter.
And many of those that are shared are negative and can be detrimental to others. Especially in small towns, we must be aware that we can unwittingly be duped into being a tool for darkness, a spreader of gossip whether it is true or not. This negative spread of information can ruin lives and can even drive people to the brink of suicide.
So, let’s try to be positive spreaders of messages, because there are plenty of people who have been hurt by the negative. I believe in the best intentions of humanity, and in the unique ability of Americans to find a way to be optimistic in the face of adversity. This suicide epidemic is some serious adversity for all of us, and one we may be able to help curb, one phone call or visit at a time.
If you are feeling you might harm yourself, the National Suicide Prevention hotline is always available with trained counselors at 1-800-273-8255. Otherwise, your primary care provider and local psychotherapist are also trained to help when you feel down or depressed. Reach out when you have dark symptoms for over two weeks, as that may be a sign of mental illness that should be treated. Stay healthy out there!
Nancy Kisner
Ad Astra DPC, LLC
Box 25
Palco, KS 67657
505 Main Street
(Note: See their ad elsewhere below on this page of the Stockton Sentinel.)
