Healthcare

OneLife Provides a Different Model for Primary Care

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The OneLife partnership includes Lance Kemper, P.A.-C;
Christie Brooks, Functional Medicine R.D.; and Joe Dugger, M.D.

Dr. Joe Dugger and partners have assembled a multidisciplinary team in a newly-renovated facility —  and along with traditional and urgent care, provide an innovative practice model for wholistic treatment. 

Everyone agrees there is room for improvement in American healthcare. Statistics indicate that emphasizing wellness, access to preventative care, and consistent management of chronic conditions improve patient outcomes and reduce the overall cost of care. OneLife Wellness and Primary Care, a new clinic, provides a model of primary care that takes all these factors into consideration.

After 20 years as a traditional primary care physician, Dr. Joe Dugger and his partners, physician assistant Lance Kemper and Functional Medicine Registered Dietitian Christie Brooks, have opened OneLife Wellness Center at 901 E. Beebe-Capps Expressway, the former Ann’s Bridal location. Community Relations Director Todd Miller discussed the concept and introduced the team. 

“The clinic will offer the traditional primary and urgent care to which patients are accustomed,” Miller explained, but what distinguishes OneLife from other practices is that they also offer an alternative known as concierge medical care or direct primary care (DPC) — in which the physician contracts with a patient for a flat monthly fee. In exchange, patients receive a guarantee of a provider who knows their medical history, is available to communicate, and offers preferential appointments to members. 

Todd Miller, Community Relations Director

“The vision for a better kind of clinic really stems from Joe’s faith. He’s a motivated achiever —  but he’s a soul/body/spirit thinker. Those different parts of our being are connected, and he was very interested in reaching patients wholistically. The vision was to have a place where patients would receive primary and urgent care with excellent providers, but where we also emphasize treating the whole person.”

Dugger is not only an experienced primary care physician with a loyal following —  he’s also an entrepreneur, having been part owner of Doc’s Grill and Searcy CrossFit. Partner and physician assistant Lance Kemper contributes deep experience in orthopedics; partner Christie Brooks is a registered dietitian with expertise in functional medicine and weight loss. Dr. Wade Fox, who specializes in men’s health and sports medicine, recently moved from Bentonville to join the OneLife practice. Physician Assistant Amanda Diles has a particular interest and experience with diabetes management. Physician Assistant Mary Madill is the director of the medically-supervised weight loss program. Mary Darden, Advanced Practice Registered Nurse, specializes in women’s health and family medicine and has years of college health experience. 

OneLife offers monthly memberships for $89 per individual, $149 per couple, and $189 per family. Family memberships for families of three or more include a couple and all children under the age of 25. There is a six month minimum requirement for monthly memberships; some exceptions apply. Student memberships are $299 per semester. Student memberships are $75 a month.  

OneLife is located at 901 E. Beebe-Capps Expressway, the former Ann’s Bridal location.

Memberships include: 

  • Guaranteed same-day appointments 
  • After-hours phone and email access to a primary care provider
  • Nearly unlimited access (up to 99 visits per month)
  • Office care and minor procedures (such as stitches, rapid strep test, flu vaccine, urinalysis, pregnancy test, EKG, and in-office labs)

The multidisciplinary facility also houses the following specialties:

  • Byram & Finley Physical Therapy
  • OneLife Hand Specialty, Cyndi Seevers, O.T.
  • Life Within Mental Health Counseling,  Thomas Ritchie, Jr.
  • Restore Cryotherapy
  • Searcy Crossfit

Miller says providing a positive experience and minimizing stress for patients is central to the philosophy of OneLife, so staff members emphasize friendly faces in reception and are mindful of patient wait times. 

A final offering by OneLife will take another step to improve access to care: in March, OneLife will roll out a no-deductible health insurance plan to include a membership to OneLife along with major medical coverage. They expect that small business owners, churches, and anyone who is without employer-provided health insurance may be interested in examining this product, which will be underwritten by a third party.

The Waldron Center is interested whenever people apply new methods to familiar processes, whether it’s professional services or manufacturing. Know someone we need to write about? We’d love to hear from you. Email psummers@harding.edu.

Entrepreneur spotlight: Ancil Lea publishes “Common Grounds”

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Ancil Lea is an entrepreneur, a coffee drinker, and he loves people. 

For most of his career, consultant Lea of Conway has supported physicians, clinics, outpatient surgery centers, and hospitals across the Mid-South as they navigate the healthcare marketplace. He helps medical practices find appropriate solutions for protecting patient information in compliance with HIPAA, with risk management, and with patient engagement and retention. His practice also provides a suite of marketing and communication services including web design, social media promotions, media communications, branding, app design, and more.

Lea has written guest columns for the healthcare section of TalkBusiness and Politics. In 2016, Ancil published an ebook, CYBER WAR: Securing Patient Health Information in Today’s Electronic Environment, endorsed and promoted by the Arkansas Medical Society.

Ancil’s latest project is a book, Common Grounds: An Entrepreneurial Guide to the Coffee Shop Office, a reflection on his experiences, insights, and successes while engaging clients and working from coffee shops such as Blue Sail in Conway. The book was an outgrowth of both his personable nature and his business model as an independent consultant.

The forward to Common Grounds is written by Dr. Jeff D. Standridge, author of The Innovator’s Field Guide, whose bio includes serving as “chief catalyst” for The Conductor, UCA’s entrepreneurship center.  Standridge observes, “one overarching characteristic that Ancil lives out daily…is his innate ability to build and maintain strong relationships. I think that is at last one of the reasons he identifies so well with the modern coffee shop.”

“Ancil and his team have compiled stories, thoughts and other musings on life in the local coffee shop office. From the perspectives of the college student and young professional, to the solo practitioner, seasoned business executive, and the barista, Common Grounds has it all.”

If you conduct life and business while plugged in at a corner table at Starbucks or Midnight Oil, perhaps Ancil’s stories will resonate with you, and remind that you that, like many, you are conducting business seated in the modern marketplace of ideas.

Common Grounds releases on Amazon this week.
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Lea previously served as executive director of the Regional Extension Center for the Office of the National Coordinator under the HiTech Act for Arkansas.     

 

Entrepreneur spotlight: Tracy Simpson’s Clinicpass app manages Sunshine Law red tape

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simpson headshotFayetteville native Tracy Simpson started her journey in founding Clinicpass in 2014, after 16 years in the pharmaceutical industry. The Affordable Care Act included the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which went into effect in 2013. It was designed to disclose any financial relationship a doctor had with a manufacturer. It required medical product manufacturers to disclose to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) “transfers of value” made to physicians. Such gifts would have occurred frequently and invisibly in the past. Now payments or transfers of value have to be reported to the CMS by the giver, and are available and searchable in the Open Payments database. The American Medical Association now recommends that providers keep their own records of money spent on them to comply with the Sunshine Act.

Such reporting generates bothersome red tape for manufacturers, and Simpson thought there was a solution for the problem that could benefit both manufacturers and physicians. Clinicpass not only facilitates pharmaceutical rep reporting, but also allows medical providers to verify the accuracy of the records and to prepare to respond to possible questions from the public.

clinicpass logo

The Clinicpass platform also functions as a scheduling tool for physician meetings with product reps, who in times past simply waited in medical offices until a doctor could make time to see them.  During Simpson’s career, she observed as regulation and reporting requirements for doctors drastically eroded the amount of time physicians had to interact with reps. Clinicpass provides structure and a record of who has called on a practice and when. Simpson believes the platform will ultimately accrue benefit to the patient, as easier scheduling keeps clinic doors open to insure that reliable information and patient assistance programs are conveniently moved into the hands of doctors.

Simpson and business partner Padgett Mangan beta-tested the tool for a year and a half in a Memphis-based medical management group, while four hundred pharmaceutical representatives used the site. Clinicpass was one of five finalists for the Delta Regional Authority Delta Challenge Sept. 13. Simpson will be traveling to New Orleans in November for Entrepreneur Week 2017.

Simpson was the Harding chapter of the Sigma Nu Tau Entrepreneurship Honor Society’s 2016 distinguished honoree. Her best advice for entrepreneurs looking to solve problems with an app-based solution? “The best advice I can give is to test your idea,” Simpson said, “and surround yourself with positive people. My biggest hurdles turned out to be my biggest blessings.”

 

Entrepreneur spotlight: Cariloop “Because no one should go through the process of caring for loved ones alone.”

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On the hallway where the Waldron Center is located, five of us are caregivers for loved ones. We make phone calls and fax documents between classes, run out at lunch to take care of business items that can’t wait, and take days off to assist with transportation to doctor appointments or during emergencies.

Being a caregiver can be a frustrating, exhausting life, periodically consumed with searching for appropriate services with limited time. Sometimes the need for critical services arises abruptly, creating immense pressure to make decisions quickly. Estimates are that 26.1 million full-time employees in the United States are caregivers for a loved one. The average caregiver-employee misses 350 hours of work a year due to the responsibilities of caregiving, and protracted caregiving frequently has negative implications for the wellness of the caregiver.

What if companies could help valued employees more easily honor commitments to their loved ones while maintaining more of their productivity and sanity during this stressful season of their lives? The “why” statement Cariloop staff recite in their weekly meeting says, “No one should go through the process of caring for their loved ones alone.”

Dallas-based Cariloop is a digital health company that provides the world’s first fully-integrated, tech-enabled caregiver support platform to help working caregivers and families plan for and manage the care of a loved one.  The Waldron Center staff first met Cariloop co-founder and CEO Michael Walsh, and Jeryn Laengrich, Cariloop CSO, on a recent visit to campus. I had lost my 91 year-old father two weeks earlier, and immediately related to the problems the company’s business model addresses.

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CEO Walsh said, “One out of every five people in the workplace today is a caregiver, and most people are Googling their way through it.” Originally Cariloop was like an “Open Table” for finding available nursing home and assisted living beds.  The second iteration became more a dynamic decision tree, walking caregivers through a series of steps where they could match caregivers with needed services. Finally, they realized people needed not just a platform, but a user experience where a caregiver and family can video chat with a certified healthcare coach who understands what customers are going through. Cariloop retooled its business model when data indicated the majority of users were accessing its website between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on weekdays, during work hours. They began to market the platform to companies as part of a benefits package.

 

 

Michael Walsh, Cariloop CEO, and Harding alum Jeryn Laengrich, CSO. Laengrich is Harding’s College of Allied Health Outstanding Alumnus of 2017. 

I was pleased to learn that Cariloop now also provides a secure space within its website for family members to upload important documents such as medication lists, power of attorney documents, advanced directives, insurance policies, and more. Family members always have them available for meetings, and can collaborate with one another in a secure space. As my father’s power of attorney and now the administrator of his estate, it has been my experience that having documentation archived would be a powerful tool for a caregiver who has to eventually shift gears settle a loved one’s estate.

The aging of the Baby Boom and increasing life expectancy is creating a “Silver Tsunami” that challenges our healthcare system, stresses our families, and places new demands on companies to manage and support employees who are losing focus and productivity due to the distraction of honorable caregiver concerns. As the first in the market to directly address those employer concerns, innovator Cariloop is well-positioned to grow as they continue to refine their service.

Update: CEO Michael Walsh was recently selected Longevity Network’s Entrepreneur of the week!