Old Rugged Cross Healthcare

12/09/2025

Sneak Peak 😉

12/06/2025

Salt and Soul in Austin, Texas

The booth is filled with medical grade salt and may facilitate skin tissue regeneration on the cellular level. There are medical studies suggesting that salt therapy could assist with detoxing (mold/pesticides). Halotherapy could also improve collagen, and other modalities.

We are supporting one of our favorite not for profits. Malachi’s Message Gala 2025.

12/05/2025

Subject: Big News… We’ve Moved! 🎉🤍

Hi friends!

We’ve been keeping a little secret… and now we finally get to share it.
Old Rugged Cross Healthcare has officially moved into our brand-new home in Hempstead! 🙌

After 5 years in Hockley and a quick stop in Waller, God opened the door to a space that fits who we are and where we’re going — more room, more services, and more ways to care for our community.

Our new location gives us:
• A welcoming lobby + office space
• A dedicated patient room for Christy
• A full wellness room for IV therapy, ozone, red light therapy, foot detox, and more coming soon
• Space to grow the activation and wellness side of our clinic

It already feels like home, and we can’t wait for you to walk through the doors.

We’ll be hosting two holiday open house events before Christmas (both lunchtime + early evening), and then a full Grand Opening celebration in January — details coming soon!

New address:
945 Tenth Street
Hempstead TX 77445

Our phone, email and fax are all the same.

And as always, we offer telemedicine visits as well.

Thank you for trusting us, supporting us, and growing with us. This move is a blessing, and we can’t wait to serve you even better in this new season.

So much love,
Christy & the Old Rugged Cross Healthcare Team 🤍✨

12/04/2025

Best kept secret 🤫

12/02/2025

This is going to be worth listening to!

Survivor of stage IV cancer and bestselling author of 'How to Starve Cancer,' Jane McLelland is internationally recognized for her work exploring cancer metabolism and for her decades of advocacy on behalf of patients and clinicians. This week, she joins IMA Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Paul Marik to discuss her personal journey, the science that informed her approach, and her mission to educate and empower others. Wednesday, December 3rd at 7pm ET.

Register now: https://geni.us/register-for-webinars

11/22/2025

💫 Many women describe progesterone therapy as feeling like “clarity,” “calm,” or “getting myself back.”
If you’re experiencing poor sleep, anxiety, mood changes, heavy periods, or perimenopause symptoms, your progesterone levels may be sending you a message.

11/20/2025

This….

The Silent Collapse of Healthcare: A ID Provider’s Higher Perspective

Healthcare is approaching a breaking point—and not because of a lack of dedication from physicians, nurse practitioners, and other frontline providers. The problem lies in a system where those delivering care are increasingly powerless to control the basic economics of their profession.

For years, reimbursement rates from Medicare and commercial insurers have declined or remained stagnant, despite rising operating costs, labor shortages, and increasing patient complexity. CMS recently projected another reduction in reimbursement—9% for hospital-based specialties like Infectious Diseases in 2026. These cuts don’t just affect salaries—they degrade the entire infrastructure of patient care.

To maintain the same income year over year, providers are forced to see more patients at a faster pace. This creates a dangerous cycle: the only way to keep practices financially stable is to increase volume. But there is a limit. Providers cannot endlessly compress encounter times while still delivering thorough, compassionate, and patient-centered care.

When reimbursement declines but expectations rise, something has to give. And what’s giving way now is provider morale, retention, and ultimately the sustainability of clinical care.

Insurance companies—not providers—determine what medical experts are paid. Imagine if other industries worked this way. No plumber allows a homeowner to dictate the bill. No attorney bills according to what the client decides is reasonable. Yet in healthcare, multi-billion-dollar insurance companies set the value of highly specialized clinical expertise, and we accept it.

This model is neither fair nor sustainable.

We must reach a point where providers collaboratively say: “If you want high-quality medical care, it must be appropriately valued. We set the rates—not the insurers.” It is not a radical demand. It is common-sense economics.

If decreasing reimbursement trends continue, providers will be left with two choices: sacrifice quality or walk away from clinical care altogether. Neither scenario serves patients.

Medicine is not a volume-based commodity—it is a highly skilled service grounded in expertise, judgment, and responsibility. Our reimbursement model must reflect that reality.

The path forward requires unity and advocacy. Providers—physicians, ARNPs, PAs—must organize and speak as one voice. We must call for:

• A fair, expertise-based reimbursement model.

• Protection against arbitrary CMS and insurer cuts.

• Alignment of compensation with quality, not quantity.

• A seat at the table when financial decisions affecting patient care are made.

Ultimately, the cost of inaction will not be measured in dollars—it will be measured in provider burnout, practice closures, and delayed or inaccessible care for patients.

We are nearing a boiling point. If change does not occur, we won’t simply have fewer providers—we will have no one left to care for the patients we dedicated our careers to serve.

It’s time for healthcare to respect those who keep it alive.

It’s time for change.

11/16/2025

Dr. Paul Marik

“Not all Hero’s wear capes”

11/16/2025

Ten years after the Texas Legislature passed a law allowing primary care physicians to enter into a certain kind of direct payment arrangement with patients – bypassing the process of receiving reimbursement through insurance companies – state lawmakers have extended that option to specialists.
House Bill 541, in effect as of June 20, expands the usage of what’s popularly known as direct primary care, into a new statutorily-defined term, “direct patient care,” which, among other provisions in the bill, authorizes a Texas-licensed physician or health care practitioner to enter into a written agreement with a patient to provide health care services in exchange for a direct fee for a specific period of time.

In a typical direct primary care model, patients pay a monthly fee, and in return, receive services like office visits and in-office procedures without involving insurance.

The bill’s 2015 predecessor, the Texas Medical Association-supported House Bill 1945, was specific to primary care physicians. HB 541 changes that language to now authorize physicians, and other health care practitioners, to enter into direct care payment arrangements to provide a “health care service,” which is defined as, “any care, service, or procedure provided by a physician or health care practitioner.” The term includes any “medical or psychological diagnosis, treatment, evaluation, advice, or other service that affects the structure or function of the human body.”

HB 541 also makes clear, as HB 1945 did, the payment arrangements are not considered an insurance product, and a physician or practitioner providing direct patient care “is not subject to regulation by the Texas Department of Insurance.”

Thomas Kim, MD, an Austin-based psychiatrist who has developed a ketamine-assisted psychotherapy program for patients, says the new law makes possible the chance to take “more control of [his] destiny” and create a psychiatric direct patient care model.

“Direct care is a direct response to how complicated and unhelpful the reality of health care is today,” Dr. Kim said. “More and more people are struggling, not just with the ability to pay … but the satisfaction. We’ve lost the connection, the doctor-patient therapeutic relationship, and I think direct care has an enormous potential to restore the importance of that relationship.”

Amy Townsend, MD, chair of TMA’s Committee on Independent Physician Practice, has been using direct primary care in her Bridge City family medicine practice since March 2020.

She advises physicians interested in utilizing a direct care model to look at all the current regulations before moving forward, emphasizing resources exist to help physicians navigate the transition.

Visit TMA’s resources on independent physician practices, and learn more about TMA’s work on insurance issues during the 2025 legislative session.

11/16/2025

If you’re taking a test and have no idea what the answer is; which letter is correct 70% of the time?

A. All the above
B. A
C. B
D. C

11/16/2025

Hot Topic… right here. No need to drive to the mall! Right here in the comfort of. Your home!!!

What’s the business shopping day of the year?

A. Fourth of July
B. New Year’s Day
C. Day after Thanksgiving
D. My birthday

11/16/2025

💜🌹💜 Hey y’all…

I wrote about the importance of FM & how it is possible to integrate many functional concepts into a mainstream practice 🌺🦋🌺

Look for this page in the link below:
https://ebooks.elitelearning.com/view/100940834/18/