Low-cost health care clinic to close its storefront but continue virtually

A low-cost alternative to health care for Wichitans and patients in rural Kansas is closing its storefront at Lincoln Heights Village at Douglas and Oliver.

Freestate Healthcare started in 2017 to make health care options better and more affordable, and it offered telemedicine years before the pandemic struck. However, the physicians who founded it encountered numerous obstacles.

“I did not fully understand at that time the depth or severity of the dysfunction that characterizes the broader American healthcare system, or makes its problems so entrenched,” wrote physician Elisha Yaghmai in a recent letter to patients. “COVID made all this even worse.”

Yaghmai didn’t return numerous requests for comment.

In his note, he said he believes health care should be cooperative and run as a service — not for profit.

“At this moment in American history, healthcare is competitive, low quality, and profit focused. After years of struggle to be different, the truth is now apparent: we can control what we do, but cannot control what happens when our patients have to enter the broader healthcare system for additional consultations, tests, or procedures.”

Yaghmai described what he called the enormous effort it takes to navigate the current health care system, including prohibitively expensive treatments, endless insurance battles and a “data-fragmented system” that requires dozens of calls for scheduling and tracking down information.

The primary care clinic will close March 1 for patients with insurance and April 1 for those paying cash.

A virtual clinic will continue for those patients paying cash.

The virtual clinic will continue to add services as well, such as allergy and immunology.

Yaghmai wrote that Freestate’s problems are not unique.

“We have a bad national ‘system,’ and system problems require broad approaches and solutions.”

He said he’s “not giving up on the problems that motivated me to try this in the first place. I am changing strategies to reflect the many new things learned from this endeavor. We will miss you.”

“I will miss you.”

This story was originally published February 12, 2024 at 11:22 AM.