Wolf and Willow Direct Care bring easy access to health care
A new business in Hollister is bringing health care accessibility and traditional bedside manner to the area.
Wolf and Willow Direct Care Clinic, located at 10998 Historic Hwy 165 in Hollister, recently opened its doors to the community. According to co-founders Kyle and Lexie Sheppard and Bryce and Makenzie Burtless, Wolf and Willow is an answer to one question they all had during work in the medical field. That question, “What would healthcare look like if it were tailored to patients' actual needs instead of being oriented around insurance billing codes and cramming in as many patients as possible?”
The answer the four came up with led them to start Wolf and Willow. “By choosing this Direct Primary Care model, we have stepped away from the constraints of what has become known as "traditional" insurance-driven healthcare and stepped into a practice rooted in accessibility, trust and genuine connection. At Wolf and Willow, care is personal,” states the Wolf and Willow Direct Care website. “Visits are unhurried. Prevention, education on overall wellness and mental health matters just as much as acute medical treatments. Patients are known as people—not numbers.”
Burtless, who is a Nurse Practitioner, is a Branson local who said one of the things which sets the clinic apart from what patients expect in the current health care system is its personal touch.
“We decided to open up a direct primary care clinic and essentially that is what we are, a primary care clinic. The biggest difference is we don't bill insurance for the visits. And so, even though I would say probably 60 to 80% of our patients still have insurance, they're seeing the benefits of direct primary care,” said Burtless. “I can get patients in on the same day or the next day. They get an hour-long visit with me. They get a direct phone number that goes right to my phone, so they can contact me at any time of the day. They have the peace of mind that I will get back to them as soon as I can.”
Burtless said the clinic has the ability as any primary clinic. “We get discounts on labs. We've got ultrasound here so we can get a lot of our ultrasounds done at a fraction of the cost that hospitals are charging people,” Burtless said. “It's essentially primary care for our patients. However, we don't bill insurance for the visit, and we've got all of these benefits that are coming with it, and patients are just loving it.”
Kyle Sheppard, a registered nurse who works in area ERs, said the whole goal is to bring back a time when serving the community, a health care provider would take time to get to know their patients and give them the attention they no longer expect from the herd mentality of doctor’s visits.
“We're trying to bring back medicine practice before insurance got involved in it. Back in the, you know, early ‘90s, late ‘80s, when we didn't have insurance, you had the capabilities of you could talk to your doctor, whenever you needed them,” Sheppard said. “You know, moms would pick up the phone, call the doctor and say, hey, my kids got X, Y, Z. What are we going to do about it? Patients felt heard and could make appointments not months out but the same day or the next day. Doctors knew their patients. That is what we are aiming for in the clinic. We want health care to be transparent, affordable and mostly accessible.”
Wolf and Willow Direct Clinic does not accept insurance to be able to provide the care they want for their patients. Instead, the clinic has membership options, which provides unlimited primary care visits and preventative visits for patients. The clinic even offers memberships for small businesses for their employees.
“We don’t have to jump through hoops for the insurance companies,” Burtless said. “Healthcare is no longer the same as it was intended to be; it's called a sick care system now versus a healthcare system. We need to be preventing things from happening instead of treating them when they do happen. For the last 10 to 15 years, you only use the doctor when you're sick now because that's only when they're available to you through urgent care and ER.”
Burtless said so far patients are loving the way they are giving personal care. “Businesses are loving it because it gives a cheaper option for them to give their employees something because benefits are so expensive now for small business employers,” said Burtless. Right now, we are teaching the community about the difference between health care and sick care. And it takes time because it’s a whole new game.”
Nurse Practitioner Kinsey Vogt, who is a provider at the clinic, said the services the clinic offers is helping those who may slip through the cracks of the insurance driven health care industry.
“I had a patient who hadn't had a primary care provider for who knows how long,” Vogt said. “She had a history of chronic illnesses when she came into the clinic. Honestly, she didn't look terrible, but she was having some issues like abdominal pain and stuff, so we started with lab work. And then decided to go out and get some imaging and then it ended up actually being a bigger deal. I had to send her to the ER to get a bigger check-up, like any primary care physician would have done. Talking to her, odds are she probably just would have kept on without going to a doctor because it cost too much. She came in and we were able to get her the care she needed. We offer services that bypass insurance and not have to deal with all of that. We can go straight to care because odds are this lady probably would have gotten an ultrasound first and then after the ultrasound, she would have gotten a CT in a clinic setting. It just would have postponed my patient’s care a lot longer if we had to work through insurance.”
Dr. Todd Baker works with the clinic as the Medical Director.
The clinic is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The clinic is open by appointment only on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday and Sunday. For more information visit wolfandwillowdpc.com.
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