Interview with Dr. Lyndsi Cress

Today we’ve got Dr. Lyndsi Cress with us. She is a West Virginia University alumness and she recently opened Coral Direct Primary Care here in Little River and U. I wanted to talk with her today for everybody to find out a little more about her. I’ve actually sent several of my patients to her. And uh, everybody’s just so thrilled with her and the service and the care. They’re very happy with her, so I just felt like U. It’d be good to get you out there some more Dr. K chs and let some people hear more about you awesome i love that. Yes, let’s do it all right. So um.

Tell me what year you graduated again from West Virginia, so I went. I did undergrad at WV, so I grab the GU 2 thousand and seven U. Then went to West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine UM. I had a few years in between where I worked and cause I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be when I grew up. So went to medical school in Louisbourg. West Virginia. Graduatedated there in 2014. Okay, all right. And then UM, you came here in 2019, right yep. So I did family medicine, so I did three years of residency. Graduated from that in 2017. Worked for a couple of years in West Virginia at an F. Qc in my my hometown and just wasn’t happy. Just decided that we wanted to move somewhere. That was warmer, more sun, more opportunities for our family, our kids. So we always vacation down here and just felt like it was some place that we could see ourselves living for the rest of our lives. And so just decided to pick up and go. And so we landed here in 2019 and of 2019 just before Covid. Actually. I know perfect time. I know yeah. UM so worked for a large healthcare system in the area until last year when I decided to go out on my own and open my own practice.

All right well um.

So your family medicine so does that mean all ages or is there an ideal patient age or type that you prefer all of them? I see kids, i see elderly, i see everybody in between, so we say cradle to grave, okay. And do you? Do you take on any diagnosis as far as like initial care.

Yeah, pretty much the only thing that I don’t accept is chronic pain. Here in the state of South Carolina, we are restricted in how much pain medication we can prescribe at a time, and it’s just not a good fit for family medicine that really should be handled by a pain specialist. So that’s really the only thing I don’t take on.

Gotcha okay U can you give me one of your success stories that really stands out to you for one of your patients? Yeah so and this is. I think, a success for DPC, which is the model that I practice just as much as it is family medicine? But I had a 42 year old female who came into my office as a new patient, hadn’t seen a doctor in a few years. She was a small business owner, so she was very busy and she had put things on the back bunter. And so when I got to her, we, you know did all the normal things like blood work. And I said you really need to get caught up with your screening test. So she hadn’t had a mammogram ever. So you’re supposed to start screening at age 40. She was 42, she said. I keep putting it off, don’t want to do it, and I’m like you really need to do it. And so I. I was a little bit pushy with that one. But she agreed and went and did her mammogram and actually discovered stage three aggressive breast cancer. Oh wow, we had.

Had any symptoms, no lumps, bumps, nothing felt great. And so she we streamlined her referrals and got her into Duke as quickly as possible, which I don’t think we would have been able to do in a traditional healthcare setting. You know. I had the time to make phone calls and we had time to sit down and talk about where she wanted to go, who she wanted to see U. And so we were able to get her into Duke within a week or two. I think it was two weeks she was there and they had started her treatments immediately and then I just followed up not too long ago with her. She was getting ready to finish up her last chemo round. A chemo was responding well and then she was getting getting ready to start oral maintenance therapy and she’s doing great so. Oh, that’s great, that is awesome. Yeah, that is a great story really, it is.

Um.

So u.

42 year old. That’s what middle-aged. Yeah, basically. I can see where a lot of these middle age adults with the families and the kids like your service being direct primary care. Like I can reach out to you and get up with you when my kid has a sore throat this morning? Or like. Do you do school notes and all that stuff too? Oh, yeah, yeah. I do everything anybody else does. It’s just better access. You know, my parents call me text me, get it, get in right away if they’re sick. So in that sense, it’s much better. I think, and my patients love it. You also do home visits too as well. Right yeah, i do. It’s not included in my membership service, but I do offer home visits within a five mile radius of the office for an added fee. Okay, that’s good to know too. Yeah, what do you feel like? People misunderstand the most about Coral Direct Primary Care.

I think the biggest thing is they feel like it’s just for someone that has a lot of money, a wealthy individual that can afford to pay for concierge medicine, which it’s not. It’s. I think that direct the point of direct primary care is to make it accessible to everybody, so it’s not concierge. It’s not thousands of dollars up front plus copays. It’s affordable and I think most people, just you know, whatever socioeconomic background they come from would benefit from direct primary care and could afford it. I just I feel like that is the biggest. One of the biggest barriers is explaining to people what it is and then a lot of people just shut down immediately. When you say I don’t take insurance, they just assume that it’s, you know, 100 of dollars a month and it’s just not. So that’s been a challenge. Is trying to get people to stay open-minded when you’re talking to them. About DPC.

I completely understand that because we don’t take insurance either and so it’s the same thing when someone asks Do you take whatever insurance and I say no, they don’t even wait for an explanation wall off like wall off and I. I have really noticed and it took me getting into it to see there is a true difference in the cash based services versus the insurance-based services and it’s not that the clinician wants to give you a different experience. It’s that the insurance demands it of us absolutely like we have so much demand. We can’t give our patients the time and attention that you and I now can give them because we’re not on the phone or responding to messages from the insurance or meeting some kind of requirement that they wanted to done.

So I get it completely and I myself lately have even switched from something that was taking my insurance and I went cash based and I I can’t believe the difference in it. It’s like. Why did I not take my own advice in this right at first you know what you preach right, right, right, yeah, so U. I totally get that and it. There’s not um, there’s not another mobile PT yet that I know of here and I don’t know of any clinics that are only cash based. So and you’re the only direct primary care on this end of the beach. Correct. I think I’m the only direct primary care period in the grant. Oka. Now there was another DPC doctor down in Myrtle who closed her doors in April, so I think I am it. There are several got years facilities but true direct primary care. I’m the only one okay, well, good to know. So everybody listen. She’s gonna have a wait list soon you better call before you’re on the waitlist. U and I know the way my patients talk that they’re not going to get out of her list of patients anytime soon, so I’ better get on there. That’s great. Yeah, yeah, so U.

I feel like this day and age with the price of everything going up, you know inflation. All those things U people tend to whether they’re using their insurance, insurance or not. They tend to want to put off health carers related stuff like they will wait and put it off and then a lot of times by the time they make it any of us, they’ve gotten themselves in a huge situation from absolutely putting everything off.

What do you feel like is a common thing that you’re seeing that people have put off that um, they shouldn’t have and they show up in your office and it’s caught them by surprise that they actually had something wrong. Yeah, well, just one of my last story about the FORTY-TW is screening screening Test? I mean they’re so important and people don’t realize it until there’s a problem. But that’s how we prevent. The problem is the screening test. So mammograms, colonoscopies for screening blood work. You know all those things that we that as doctors try to get people to do, there’s a reason there’s a reason that we encourage that, because if you don’t, this is what happens. Two years later, you’ve got a stage three cancer and you’re having to go through chemo and surgery and all these treatments that you didn’t plan for in your wife as a 42 year- old, you know. So I think that one is probably one of the biggest, but also probably just general like hypertension, diabetes stuff. I mean, that’s probably the bread and butter of what I see the most of and oka. If people don’t feel bad, they don’t.

It doesn’t seem to be as pressing of an issue and but diabetes is probably one of the biggest things that you don’t want to do that with because you don’t feel anything until it’s 5 ten years down the line and now you’ve got kidney failure. Neuropathy. You can’t see because your vision is affected by the glucose elevations and you know the damage is done. You can’t reverse it at that point so those are probably the two biggest ones. Diabetes and Preventative cancer screenings.

Can you tell us some of the like signs and symptoms of having diabetes that we may not notice sure so type two now type one and type two are very different, so I’m talking solely about type two diabetes. You may not feel anything until sugars are very, very high or even low, but so you might get thirsty might feel like your mouth is dry. I feel like you’re having to drink a lot of water and when that starts to happen then you start peeing a lot right so thirsty, thirsty, thirsty drinking all this water, it’s not quenching that thirst and but you’re just continuing to pep. And that’s probably the one of the biggest ones that I see. And we check the sugar because that’s your body trying to dilute the glucose in the blood. So that’s the only mechanism by which it can do that without medications. And so that’s probably the most common sign that I see.

Aboutcha years ago, uh. I had a friend that was fairly healthy and they said to me, I’m thirsty all the time and my friend just got diagnosed with diabetes and it was like you a person that you know you would expect like type two diabetes to the insulin resistance to come in. And I said to them. I said No, there’s no way there’s no wayticah, yeah. I was like. Wow, it blew my mind. Even I mean fit person, you know, like it was, it was really eye open that, you know, you don’t have to live a terrible lifestyle for type two diabetes to occur either. And one of the biggest factors do is genetics, which we can’t do anything about. That can’t pick your parents, so you’re stuck with your jeans and wherever they come from. And so yeah. I have people that do all the right things. But you know, they still end up with hypertension or high cholesterol or diabetes. And yeah, so you just have to. That’s why again, why getting regular checkups and screening tests and things are so important? Yeah, okay.

So tell us if anybody that’s listening right now wants to get an appointment at your office. What do they need to do? Easiest thing to do would be to go on my website. Coraldpc. Dot. Com. You can email me directly from that website. You can join from that website and also has my phone number so you can call it is a IM. So I don’t have a staff. So if people call and I don’t answer, you have to make sure you leave a message and I will call you back. But if I’m with a patient. I don’t always answer the phone. So so email is probably the best way to get a hold of me.

Okay. I always brag to the patients about you and say she doesn’t even have a secretary when you call it’s her. Yeah, truly it is truly amazing though that just that in and of itself that I could call and talk to my doctor because I see everyone struggling with all the lines like they call and they get sent here here hear anyway, just the the convenience of being able to talk to you like that is worth worth the price. If you ask me you know it’s funny. Every time someone calls that they’re not expecting to get me on the phone like someone that’s telling about the office or the practice. I’ll answer is say Coral DPC. You know it’s Dr. Ks speaking and they’re like what there’s like a silence like a pause and they’re like. Wait who who is this? And like it’s Dr. Ks they’re like. Oh oh. I wasn’t expecting. Get the doctor like to get all nervous. That is funny. That is funny but but they after they get over the shock I’m sure they appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely is amazing.

So how far out like it say go on the website right now and join. How soon will it be before I have my first appointment with you or like Do you do like an initial checkup or something to get started? Yeah, so I offer free meeting and gre if people wanted to come in and just meet me in person see the office. But if you sign up and I receive all your enrollment information, usually I can get people in within the week if there’s something really pressing going on like needs to be seen right away we can do same day or next day, but sometimes it’s just like a matter of lining up our schedules. So yeah, but I I can get people in right away. Okay, great um excuse me.

I. U.

I tell all my patients that you know is so nice because they can call and they can talk to you but also to everybody out there as a provider of you know like me given physical therapy. It is so amazing that when I have a problem with one of your patients I can call. I can call or text Dr. Cress. I do not have to go through all the press 1, 2, three like I can get up with you and I mean I’m bragging on you and uh. I can get up with her fast too. Guys right like it is nice, i love it and the patients love it too. They watch me stand there to message you. You know something’s going on and they just that thrills them that anybody can get up with their doctor. Not yes you know like I can get up with them I. I can get it with you, i mean it is amazing so I really appreciate you doing this interview with us. Yeah, and is there anything else that you feel like we need to know about Coral or about you?

I don’t think so other than I mean. I really just feel like this is the DPC Direct primary Care is go to save primary Care and potentially.

Medical care in general I just feel like family medicine and primary care is such an important part of the medical wheel cog, cog in the wheel. I guess, but it’s it’s like the hub of the wheel I feel like and everything stems from primary care. And if we are not being good to our primary care doctors, they’re going to quit and they already are. And so DPC I think is saving careers and it’s saving patients because I was.

You know two years ago I was willing to. I was ready to go where at Starbucks I was ready to do anything other than patient care and I found EPC. And since I’ve been doing that. I love taking care of patients again. So I. I feel like I would have been seeing no patients had, i just quit, you know. So this is the argument that people say. Oh, you’re just you’re cherry picking or you’re only seeing a couple 100 patients, yeah, but I would have been seeing none because I was done, i was burnt out, i was ready to quit. So I think that DPC has saved my career and probably going to continue to grow. And I hope it does because I think it’s the future so awesome. Well, it was nice to talk to you today and everybody, I’m telling you you need to sign up before there is a waitlist is coming soon. If you ask me.

All right. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Cress. Thank you so much.