Sun. May 19th, 2024

Our guest in Episode #100: Dr. Kristen Dall-Winther is a Wisconsin native. Born and raised in Racine, she was the eldest of 4 children in her working-class family, which her parents led as a career firefighter and quilt-shop owner. She was called to medicine at an early age and graduated from the University of Wisconsin at age 20. After working for a quick year as a Microbiologist, she began medical school at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in 2000.

She quickly came to learn that one’s ability to create a trusting, open relationship with patients was paramount in being able to care for them well, and it was clear to her that no specialty offered better reverence for that relationship than Family Medicine. Just before she graduated from medical school in 2004, she matched into her first choice of residencies – Family Medicine, in rural Belleville, Wisconsin. There, she fell in love with small-town medicine.

Residency ended in 2007, after which Dr. Dall-Winther moved to La Crosse to start her practice at Mayo Clinic, where she would serve for 10 years. She became a patient herself when she was diagnosed with advanced sarcoidosis in 2015. Three months later, after unexpectedly losing her father to metastatic lung cancer, Dr. Dall-Winther began to evaluate how she was spending her time, feeling an urgency to make the most of every day and there began both a professional and personal healing that culminated in the birth of her Direct Primary Care clinic – Birchwood Family Medicine!

When she’s not working, she enjoys spending time with her large family and is a big fan of her mini goldendoodle Penny, Brandi Carlile, her 30-some chickens, gardening, music, traveling, reading and film.

She opened Birchwood Family Medicine in June 2021.

LISTEN HERE

135370cookie-checkMy DPC Story: Dr. Kristen Dall-Winther of Birchwood Family Medicine in Birchwood, WI
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By Maryal Concepcion, MD

A Sacramento native, Dr. Maryal Concepcion is a Filipinx creator and connector. She attended the University of California at Davis where she graduated in 2005 with a double major in Anthropology (BS) and Evolution & Ecology (BA). She had an unforgettable time as a California transplant when she got her MD at Creighton University in Omaha, NE. It was there she discovered hayrack rides, found her Husband, Dr. Jeremiah Fillo, and discovered her love of rural family medicine. Her residency training was in the unopposed family medicine program at Doctors Medical Center, Modesto, a training extension through the UC Davis Medical School. During her time in training, she returned to rural Superior Nebraska to complete proficiency training in performing colonoscopies as part of her rural family medicine concentration. After residency, she moved to Arnold, CA where she worked under the fee for service model with her Husband doing full-scope care for over five years. Though grateful for her experience in this role, she was driven to seek a better way of life and a desire to practice insurance-free medicine and that was when she discovered DPC. She is the founder and host of the podcast My DPC Story, a weekly podcast that educates and inspires by featuring DPC and direct care physicians. Find it at mydpcstory.com and on all major podcasting platforms. Most recently, she became the CEO and wearer-of-all-the-other-hats at Big Trees MD, the first Direct Primary Care in Arnold, a rural town of 4,000 in the Stanislaus National Forest located in Northern California. Her clinic was created as a telemedicine and home visit model without a brick and mortar space. But, the title she is most proud of is being a Mama to Asher & Nolan, her two ridiculously awesome and cuddly boys!

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