Dr. Robert Heyl started providing a free primary care medical clinic for the uninsured at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church three years ago because he wanted to get involved with missionary medicine and realized there was a need right here in Cortez.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, it\u2019s my Christian faith and wanting to give back to people using my skills,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Now he is working with the Nurse Navigator program at Southwest Memorial Hospital to connect people with a permanent primary care doctor.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time, I\u2019m going to be encouraging them to get set up with a (Primary Health Care Provider),\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Nurse Navigator program was started at the hospital in September to help break down all kinds of barriers of care. Maureen Pyle, who heads the program, said she connects patients with primary care doctors, transportation and financial advisers, who can help them sign up for Medicaid or other forms of insurance.<\/p>\n
The program is part of a trend all over the country to connect patients with care, she said. The hospital received a two-year grant from the state to start the navigator program and it is planned to continue after the grant runs out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will continue to be a main part of our hospital,\u201d Pyle said.<\/p>\n
But sometimes the referrals will flow the other way and Pyle will refer patients to Heyl\u2019s free clinic because the wait time to see a primary care doctor can be up to a month.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe only have so many physicians and practitioners in our county,\u201d Pyle said.<\/p>\n
Heyl suspended the clinics over the summer and received moving thank-you letters, which encouraged him to return to his work.<\/p>\n
Debrah Archer, a family nurse practitioner, began helping staff the clinics when they restarted so they could be offered more consistently.<\/p>\n
Patients can receive prescriptions and X-ray orders at the clinics.<\/p>\n
However, they are responsible for the cost of medicine.<\/p>\n
The free clinics are held at 110 W. North St. on Tuesdays at 1 p.m. Call 565-4436 for an appointment or walk in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dr. Robert Heyl started providing a free primary care medical clinic for the uninsured at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church three years ago because he wanted to get involved with missionary medicine and realized there was a need right here in Cortez. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s my Christian faith and wanting to give back to people using […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":122085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[61,1346,2666,2172],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-122084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-health","tag-health-insurance","tag-health-treatment","tag-healthcare-policy"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122084"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=122084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}