Olathe-based Docs Who Care aims to offer help in rural areas

When you live in Johnson County, it might be hard to imagine a hospital that only has one doctor present at any given time.

For rural hospitals, that’s just a fact of everyday life. It gets rough when they have trouble filling that position.

That’s where Olathe-based Docs Who Care comes into the picture. The 25-year-old organization matches doctors and advanced practice providers, such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants, who want more non-traditional schedules and rural hospitals that need healthcare providers.

In January, the group gained a new CEO, Graham Morsch, after his father, founder Gary Morsch, retired. Graham Morsch has been the group’s chief operating officer since 2016.

“Our primary market is hospitals that are in need of help that have trouble recruiting permanent providers to come to their town,” Graham Morsch said.

States on their roster include Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah and Washington.

The staffing relief can be temporary or permanent. For example, a hospital might use Docs Who Care for six months while they recruit a new permanent doctor for their hospital.

“A hospital will call us because they just lost the only physician in town,” Morsch said. “We’re able to start putting a team together and fill that immediate need to keep admitting acute patients and keep the ED doors open.

“That’s one thing near and dear to our hearts. There’s not a lot of companies or organizations that can do that. They know they can turn to us; they can count on us to get the job done.”

At Harrison County Community Hospital in Bethany, Missouri, Docs Who Care has been providing staff for at least 10 years. Though Bethany has three other doctors in town, the hospital’s administration wanted someone available for the emergency department at all times.

“It’s vital for our community. If you think about what a rural hospital provides … if we weren’t here with an emergency room, some people would not make it,” said Tina Gillespie, CEO of Harrison County community Hospital. “They would have to travel 30 to 50 to 75 miles for care.”

Gillespie called the process of getting Docs Who Care providers incredibly simple because the group coordinates its own schedule with providers, so the hospital doesn’t have to coordinate it.

A doctor might live in the Kansas City area but drive several hours to serve a 24-hour or a 72-hour shift. That typically means that doctor stays on the hospital premises but there is a place for him or her to sleep when not seeing patients.

Physician Deborah Manning used to have a solo family practice, but she found herself working 20-hour days to keep up with paperwork and never getting a break to spend time with her family. She signed on with Docs Who Care in 2013 and closed her practice the next year.

“I loved the idea it was just a shift, and whenever I got home, I was home for real,” Manning said. “To say I’m satisfied is not even a bright enough term.”

As a solo practitioner, she often found herself working from 6 a.m. to 1 a.m. and using weekends to catch up.

“There was really never a time I was able to take a day off,” she said. “The best is thing (About Docs Who Care) is the work-life balance. There’s a lot of physician burnout these days.”

Because providers like Manning are independent contractors, they can pick the shifts they want and aren’t locked into a particular schedule, though many do go back to the same hospitals each month and keep semi-regular shifts.

“It provides flexibility for our providers, so they can create their schedule. They may work in another facility and moonlight with Docs Who Care,” Morsch said.

Currently, Docs Who Care serves about 112 hospitals using approximately 300 providers and has 22 employees who keep it running.

Though Manning lives in Kansas City, she travels to Albany and Bethany, Missouri, to work. She also serves as one of the group’s medical directors for Missouri.

Medical directors take calls 24 hours a day from Docs Who Care providers when they need advice on how to treat a patient.

This story was originally published January 23, 2020 at 10:07 AM with the headline "Olathe-based Docs Who Care aims to offer help in rural areas."