A few years ago we got a call from a physician who’d worked for a large HMO practice asking if we’d hire him. When he told us he’d worked for them for 12 years, we told him it would take another 12 to unlearn the bad habits that insurance-based medicine had drilled into him, and reinvent himself to do justice to our style of practice.

Simply changing business models isn’t enough. It takes years of experience, innovation and insight to get this kind of practice right. We’ve been at it since 1998 and we’re still learning, improving and adapting to our patients’ needs.

We’re able to draw on this experience when patients face situations, often involving travel, that might stump other practices. Like the time a patient developed a rash on a trans-Atlantic flight. We were able to diagnose it from a photo he sent from his phone, and we had medicine waiting for him at the pharmacy before he landed.

Or the one who locked her front door and twisted her ankle walking to the car that was waiting to take her to a flight to meet her family in Europe. We told her to stick with the plan, and while she was in the air, we scrambled to find a medical supplier not far from her hotel in Rome that carried the same, American brand of splint we use here.

The point is, it takes experience — and lots of it — to get good at this kind of medicine. We’ve been at it longer than anyone in the nation, and much longer than anyone in Colorado.