Thank You for Making My Job Harder, (please take no offense, read on for encouragement) You may not have seen much of me towards the end of 2019. I spent a lot of time in my office with patients filling out marketplace insurance applications for 2020. Some of our patients are moving on to primary care now that they have coverage for this year. This is where you make my job tougher. Your compassion and kindness and prayers and quality medical care makes patients not want to move on. They regularly ask me if any of our doctors are coming out of retirement, so they can see them in their office. Or they suggest, “Hey, what if I keep coming here, and you just bill my insurance now?” They are excited to get insurance, but it is bittersweet, because that means that they will no longer be a patient here. One gentleman got teary eyed when it came time to set up that next appointment saying, “Your clinic helped keep me alive this year. It’s really hard to move on.” But they do. Appointments are set up, records are faxed, and sometimes they even call back in just to let us know that they are doing well. You’ve heard the phrase, “You get what you pay for.” Well, here at His Hands, we hope each patient who walks through the doors feels like he or she gets so much more than “free care.” We want them to know that we care for them, that they are important, and we celebrate that bittersweet time they find insurance coverage and move on to primary care. You are a HUGE part of making that happen. So thank you-for all your dedication, compassion, and time you invest here in our clinic. You make my job (of moving patients on to primary care) harder, but let’s keep offering stellar medical and spiritual care in 2020, and I will continue to be up for the challenge of helping our patients navigate the bittersweet goodbye of obtaining insurance.

Amy DeLay, Patient Advocate