Lake Country This Month

By Eric Oliver Enterprise Staff OCONOMOWOC — There's a way to make health care affordable and it's happening right here in Oconomowoc. Dr. Timothy Murray is the founder and CEO of Solstice Health and he is working to change the way people think about their health. Along the way, he has done what might seem impossible to some in eliminating a need for insur- ance. It's working. In the three years Murray has been operat- ing he opened a second loca- tion and he is eyeing several more throughout the state in the coming year. The direct primary care model is some- thing that's been gaining momentum nationally for the past few years. Murray was an early adopter and among the first, if not the first, adopters in Wisconsin, but he predicts in five years, what is known as health care will change com- pletely and direct primary care will be the new standard. Direct primary care, simpli- fied, is when a doctor takes the services offered at large hospi- tals, and performs them with- out relying on insurance. A $3,000 MRI becomes $400. A test to check cholesterol levels drops from a once-a-year luxu- ry dictated by your doctor and insurance company to being available for less than a cup of coffee. Murray compared primary care to auto insurance. Auto insurance only covers your car when it's in a car wreck, but when it comes to prolong- ing your car's health, you get oil changes, tire rotations and even new wiper blades, all things that are very afford- able. "It's no different for primary care," Murray said. "That's the way we feel health insur- ance should be driven. It should cover catastrophic issues and the rest of it, The primary care where we spend 90 percent of all health care cost should be done for low costs because it is a low cost." Murray said the current sys- tem of health care is a mess. "When physicians are employed it's just a horrific way to practice medicine, only because you don't have the option then of doing the right thing for a patient, which is sending them to who you think is the best," Murray said. "...You're bound by the hospital administrators and things like that." Patient relations are a prior- ity for Murray and for Sol- stice. In a hospital, doctors see thousands of a patients a year, but they see them for minutes at a time because the rest of their time is spent doing paperwork for insurance com- panies. At Solstice and other prima- ry care providers, Murray said there is no insurance paperwork to fill out, so all that time is spent with patients. "(Doctors employed at hos- pitals) are in a quagmire of electronic records and they spend most of their day doing paperwork," Murray said. Programs offered There are several other aspects of Solstice health. Murray has made it a mission of his and Solstice to offer a medically supervised weight- loss program. The program makes up a majority of his cases. It's a passion of his because of how pervasive a problem it is in the country. "Adult and childhood obesi- ty cases are at rates of about 70 percent," Murray said. "I wanted to offer something that was cost-effective, something that I knew was legitimate." He researched various methods, was part of several fellowships in Florida and brought a program he found in Europe to southeastern Wisconsin, the first to bring it here. Since he began offering it, he has seen over 10,000 pounds of weight lost by patients in the first three years. He is call- ing it one of the driving forces for his campaign for trans- parency. In addition, patients in his weight-loss program also have access to the direct preventive care services he offers. "We're trying to empower patients to take back control of their health," Murray said. In addition, Solstice offers direct access to clinical and toxicology labs, which used to only be accessible through doctor's orders. Murray also has a regenerative cell therapy program that takes stem cells and uses them to heal various orthopedic conditions and injuries, avoiding full limb replacement programs when- ever possible. Finally, Solstice has IV nutritional therapy and several cosmetic aesthetic options — all at a wholesale price. Because there is no insurance, Murray has no markup for his services. Murray is the only doctor with Solstice currently; he uses a nurse practitioner to assist his caseload, but when he starts expanding across the state he expects to bring more doctors and nurse practition- ers on board and in turn help more patients and adopt more primary care practices. "It's all bottom line for (hos- pital administrators)," Mur- ray said. "It's no longer health care. It's a business. That is not what health care was designed to be." 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Detaching from devices By Chris Bennett Special to The Freeman DELAFIELD — It's a wonder there is no creed regaling how email, like its paper-based predeces- sor, also arrives regard- less of snow, rain, heat or gloom of night. Email and all forms of electronic communication — social media, the Inter- net and more — have become a pervasive part of almost everyone's life in the past 20 years. Family functions from baptisms to bridal show- ers are interrupted by the buzz of a phone signaling a text message or Face- book update. Checking work email from home, for some, is as much a part of their routine as locking the front door before bed. Our relationships with electronics can grow com- plex, spiral from control and cause stress if not monitored with caution and discipline. In a telling and surreal development, an app now exists for the smartphone to help users fight stress. According to a Decem- ber article in the Huffing- ton Post, the new social networking app Koko is dedicated to helping users fight stress by crowd- sourcing questions and worries. What cannot be crowd- sourced is a cure for the physical or mental stress caused by using smart- phones, iPads, iPods, iWatches, laptops, GPS devices and more on an almost constant basis. Dr. Daniel Murray is a chiropractor and the owner of Lake Country Health Center, 1452 Gene- see St. in Delafield. Mur- ray pointed out how much time we spend in an aver- age day hunched in front of something. Murray said some check email during breakfast and drive to work, only to sit at a desk and work on a computer all day. They check their phone or Face- book during coffee breaks. They return home, watch television and per- haps check email again from a laptop or send text messages from their phone. "I've been doing this long enough that we have seen such a variety of muscular, skeletal and ten- don issues related to pos- ture, related to repetitive motion syndrome," Mur- ray said. "It's reached the point where we have to think of this with kids." Murray said a condition exists colloquially called "text neck" in his profes- sion. The human head weights 10 to 11 pounds, and is not meant to be held constantly in the position conducive to typing or tex- ting. Such actions stress the neck, chest, shoulder girdle and other core mus- cles. The physical root of the problem is forward car- riage, Murray said. The head should sit atop the shoulders, not in front. The spine should curve in — we should not be turtle- backed and hunched. A simple way to compen- sate for this it to try stretches that force the shoulders, neck and chest back into a more natural position. Murray said to envision trying to hold a tennis ball between your shoulder blades. Consult with your physician or medical practitioner for more information. What Murray describes is the physical pain caused by a physical act, such as texting or staring at a keyboard. Mental stress also manifests phys- ically. "The number of patients I saw who are stressed out because of the holidays or loved ones — it manifests as tension and shoulder pain," Mur- ray said. "We know stress has an adverse physiologi- cal affect on the cellular level." Connecting with others, not their devices Stress can come about from electronics if one spends too much time watching someone else's social media highlight reel and compares the low points of his or her life to the high points of some- one else's. A June 2015 story in the Los Angeles Times cited a Pew Research Center study that revealed 71 per- cent of adults who go online use Facebook, and 23 percent use Twitter. A University of Houston study last year revealed that lingering too much on other people's Facebook status updates can cause depression. The notion of "keeping up with the Joneses" is an issue, especially for social media users. A solution Murray offers for alleviat- ing mental stress involves avoiding electronics and connecting on a human level. "Talk with your clergy," Murray said. "Talk with your significant other. Read a book at night and turn off the news. Focus on those things that are positive in life." Frequent electronic use can be stressful Submitted photo Dr. Daniel Murray works with a patient's neck. Overuse of hand held electronics can lead to neck and spinal issues. An apple a day keeps insurance away Local health care operation eyes expansion by eliminating costs associated with insurance

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