Red Feather residents tickled to have hometown physician

RED FEATHER LAKES – The prognosis for success was poor but Dr. Janice Weixelman forged ahead anyway, opening a medical clinic in tiny, rural Red Feather Lakes in October 2003.
Today the 45-year-old Weixelman divides her time between her Red Feather Medical Clinic and Wellington Medical Clinic, which she took over in the spring of 2003.
Despite dire predictions of tough economics, Weixelman said her business is operating in the black after just a year.
The dual clinics represent the realization of dream for Weixelman. “It’s a life-time dream,” she said. “I grew up in the area and I watched too many people whose health deteriorated because of access issues.”
Red Feather Lakes, a seasonal community that swells from approximately 700 in the winter to more than 3,000 in the summer, is roughly an hour’s drive north and west of Fort Collins. Before Weixelman opened her clinic the community had only the rural fire departments in the area to turn to in emergencies.
“For the most part there are no doctors,´ said Marilyn Colter, director of the Red Feather Lakes Community Library. “So people would come to the library or to the fire department and say ‘my friend fell and seems to be hurt’ and there would be no one who could really help them except for the EMTs, who are not doctors.”
Weixelman spent about two years planning for her new Red Feather practice. In early 2002 the Poudre Health Services District (now the Health District of Northern Larimer County) studied the feasibility of opening a health care facility in the area.
The health district surveyed residents and contracted with a consultant to do a market analysis of health care utilization rates, said Richard Cox, communications director for the health district. The results weren’t encouraging.
“The conclusion of the consultant was that although it was not impossible for a primary care practice to be established in that area, there were significant challenges to doing so,” Cox said. Among the challenges: a small number of full-time residents, many of whom already had primary care providers in Fort Collins.
The health district opted not to pursue offering services in the area, but Weixelman was undeterred. “I always felt that they asked the wrong questions in the survey,” she noted.
She remained optimistic and said her husband, physician’s assistant Ron Kavalec, was even more so. “My husband was much more optimistic and on target than I was. I thought it would be five years before I would be on my feet and it has been one year.”
Weixelman estimates that she has about 300 patients in Red Feather and about 1,000 in Wellington. Anticipating further growth, Weixelman is seeking another physician to help keep up the pace.
She has attracted patients via creative marketing, Weixelman said. “We let people know we didn’t expect to become their primary care provider but that we were there for urgent care needs, for lab tests. That gave them the opportunity to get to know me. Over time people have gone from being intermittent patients to having their records transferred.”
Weixelman has tailored her approach to the needs of the community. She accepts Medicaid patients. She does blood draws at her rural clinics and takes the samples to a lab in Fort Collins for her patients. From there the results are faxed to their personal physicians. She performs immunizations and also carries prepackaged prescription medications.
“We learned really early that it doesn’t help somebody to come to a clinic close by and still have to drive to town for the medicine they need.”
Weixelman’s much-needed services have been well received, Colter said. “It’s amazing how many people are finding this is a perfectly acceptable place to place your trust for medical care.”
In Red Feather Weixelman sees patients with widely varied medical needs. “I haven’t found the typical patient. I see all kinds of trauma, from minor skin injury to something major like a motor vehicle accident. I’ve seen people who are very articulate about their health care and taking good care of themselves and I’ve seen patients who haven’t seen a doctor for 15 years and have let things go for far too long.
“I see all ages from newborns to elderly people.”
Practicing medicine in her rural clinics is different, Weixelman said. “In Red Feather you have to be autonomous. Your specialty sources aren’t next door so you learn to be more practical. You don’t necessarily have to do a chest X-ray to know if someone has pneumonia. And, after years of dealing with emergency medicine I feel very comfortable suturing lacerations, setting broken bones and taking of skin lesions that a lot of people typically look to higher levels of care for.”
Before becoming a physician, Weixelman was a registered nurse for 10 years, eight of those as an emergency room nurse. She worked as an emergency medical technician before that.
She combines that diverse medical background with an understanding of the communities where she works that comes from having lived there.
The people who live in Red Feather are “fabulous,” Weixelman said. “They’re fun. They’re fiercely independent, which you have to be to live up there. For the most part, they’re very pleasant people to take care of. It’s really nice to have people say thank you for being here.”

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