Practice offers specialized care
For patients with a potential neurological disorder, the dread of waiting for a diagnosis can be unbearable, and in Southwest Colorado, getting into a doctor’s office can sometimes take up to two months.
However, a new neurologist at Mercy Regional Medical Center aims to help cut down that wait time, as well as fill a major gap in a much-needed area of specialized care in the region.
Dr. Jessica Hannah opened a new medical practice in August and is already receiving more than 130 referrals a month, highlighting the large local demand for neurological services, which colleagues agree has been lacking for several years.
“That’s certainly an area of need that Dr. Hannah is starting to fill,” said Dr. Dan Schaefer of Whole Health Family Medicine Clinic in Durango. “And I think there’s hope things are headed in a good direction.”
Hannah’s practice is a full-service neurology clinic that provides diagnosis and treatment for a wide range of brain and nervous system conditions, as well as neurological disorders, including concussions, dementia, migraines, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and stroke, among others.
For the past several years, patients who require an evaluation from a neurological doctor did have a few options.
Dr. Catherine Willner of Durango Neurological Associates was the only practicing neurologist in Durango for some time. Willner did not respond to The Durango Herald’s request for comment.
For children who need care, the San Juan Basin Health Department offers a neurology clinic four times a year for three-day sessions, providing services to about 30 children during each session, spokeswoman Claire Ninde said.
Ninde said the specialty clinic – which serves clients from Archuleta, La Plata and San Juan counties – reduces barriers to care for rural families that might otherwise not be able to access the health care services they need. She said some families travel from as far west as Towaoc.
“This eliminates the need to drive to the Front Range for health care services, a trip some of these families might not be able to take,” Ninde said, adding that a large portion of the patients using the specialty neurology clinic are on Medicaid.
And, every couple months, doctors from the St. Mary’s Neurology Clinic in Grand Junction set up a neurology clinic at Animas Urgent Care. Neither St. Mary’s nor Animas Urgent Care returned calls seeking comment.
However, the opening of Hannah’s medical practice at Mercy signifies the longstanding need in the community.
For most adults, if Willner was booked, the only other options were to travel to Denver or Grand Junction, or cross the state line to Farmington or Albuquerque, where some insurance companies don’t cover the cost.
“We’ve been booked every week since we started,” Hannah said. “A lot of the reasons for that is the patient’s access to care is backlogged, and our catch area is just massive.”
Hannah went to medical school at the University of South Carolina in Charleston, and did a four-year residency there, as well as an additional year focusing on care for patients who had strokes. This is her first practice at Mercy.
“We don’t have everything, but for a relatively small rural facility, we have a lot,” Hannah said. “Here, for the most part, I’m seeing healthy individuals that have trouble with migraines, memory or tremors. I get so many people in here that say, ‘I’ve done all the right things, why am I having short-term memory loss?’”
But even Hannah is booked through February.
As a result, primary care providers, such as Schaefer, have a working relationship with Hannah, and can call her office to start initial care before the patient can get an appointment.
“That way, I can get a sense of how I can get the work going and in motion as opposed to just waiting until the evaluation with the neurologist,” Schaefer said. “That’s just one way to bridge that gap: have communication with a specialist directly.”
Dr. Jordan Loftis of La Plata Family Medicine said the range of options for neurological care in Durango, as well as most medical needs, exceeds other communities similar in size to La Plata County.
“We have a core nucleus of specialists in Durango that provide a level of service you wouldn’t normally get with another county that has the population we have,” Loftis said. “We’re very fortunate, but there is a finite limit to those services.”
Because of population size and the area’s relative isolation, Loftis said it’s just the reality of living here that some medical services will not be available, such as neurosurgery.
“We’re never going to be a giant tertiary medical center, but we’ll have access to specialists for evaluations,” Loftis said. “But if someone has a very specialized diagnoses, they’re going to have to go to Grand Junction or Denver. And that’s normal.”
Neurosurgery is also offered at Four Corners Neurological Services in Farmington, as well as in Albuquerque. Both local primary care providers stressed the hardship it is for patients to travel for surgery.
Throughout the country, there is a significant shortage of neurologists. The estimated doctor-to-patient shortfall is 19 percent by 2025, according to a 2013 report published in the journal Neurology.
The average wait time for a new patient in 2012 was 34.8 days, and another 30 days for a follow-up visit. If the report’s predictions are correct, there will be 18,060 neurologists in the U.S. in 2025, with an estimated need of 21,440 doctors.
Many attribute the sparse number of new neurologists to the high cost of schooling and the low payback in practicing.
“With the rapidly rising rates of brain diseases such as dementia and stroke at the same time as the number of U.S. medical residents choosing neurology over other specialties is clearly declining, the U.S. could face a crisis,” Dr. Thomas R. Vidic of the Elkhart Clinic in Indiana said in a statement.
Hannah is aided by Morgan Manulik, a physician’s assistant who graduated from Texas Tech University and previously provided care as a neurology physician’s assistant in Farmington for three years.
Hannah said the long-term goal of the neurology practice at Mercy is to add another neurologist so the pair could better care for both inpatients and outpatients.
https://durangoherald.com/articles/125862-new-neurologist-at-mercy-provides-crucial-services-to-durango-residents
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