After over a decade of serving pediatric patients in the high country communities of Colorado as Ebert Children’s Clinic, we opened up our health care practice to serve the needs of the adult population several years ago. As Dr. Chris can attest to, the world of health care has grown and evolved incredibly since she first opened up her practice in Colorado in 2000, and we all continue to learn from the providers we welcome to our team as well as the students we mentor.

This past year, we’ve had the pleasure of having Tara Taylor, FNP on our staff. She’s brought a wealth of knowledge and unique experience from having practiced on a medical campus much, much larger than our little mountain clinic, and her insight into everything from patient care to our own high altitude research projects continues to be an invaluable asset to both our practice and our community. She was so gracious one afternoon to have a chat with me between patients:

How did you find yourself in Colorado’s high country health care community?

So, I have actually lived here since 2004, so I’ve lived here 15 years. I came out here for 6 mos to ski, and stayed for 15 years. I found myself loving it, bought my first house and decided to stay out here. I’ve actually commuted down to Denver all this time, because I had originally started in New Jersey in 2002 in Critical Care. So when I moved out here I wanted to be in the mountains, but I also couldn’t do Critical Care up here at that time. So I decided to commute down to Denver for three 12-hours shifts a week, and then live up here four days a week. So I had an apartment in Denver … when I went back to NP school, my goal was to work and live in my own community. I think that’s huge for me … and not only be serving the population of Denver, but to be serving the people of my actual community.

How long had you been practicing in Denver?

Since 2005, because I worked 6 months at Keystone Clinic, so I’ve been in Denver working for 14 years  prior to this in the ICU. And I’ve worked at Children’s hospital in the pediatric ICU, burn ICU’s, bone marrow transplant, open-heart surgery, neuro-trauma, multi-system trauma, all of it.

How is it different working up here, for a small clinic, at that?

This is a huge change … I’m still working down there once a month, so I get to go down and play and enjoy that type of intensity. But at the same time, coming back here, I think that the critical care aspect … it still plays a role here. And in my letter, when they said, “Why do you want to go from [being] an ICU nurse to family practice?” … I said for so long, I’ve seen patients in the ICU [whose] admission or … critical portion of their admission could have been avoided if they had better focus on primary care and had their needs met. If they had been on the right medications, if someone had spent the time — and sometimes it’s because of their own compliance — but with adequate primary care, we’re avoided what I was seeing in the ICU. 

Now, being in primary care, I get the stimulation I need from the independence of it, making these decisions, and I really enjoy finding out what’s going on with the patient, deciding what tests to run, and getting back these results and being able to properly refer them. I enjoy the time that I’m able to have with those patients here at a private practice. So each patient gets the time that they need to be properly cared for. 

And I’m just seeing extremely sick patients. I’m not seeing a lot of sore throats and earaches, unless you’re 2 years old; besides that, the adults have really complex diagnoses that require a lot of thought. And in its own respect, it’s critical to me.

Great segue: what are the greatest challenges you’ve seen practicing up here?

I think some of the biggest challenges that I have seen up here is limitation of services. That’s why this clinic is bringing up Nephrology, … [expanding] mental health services here, and then, to bring in … pain management specialty, and give them a place to practice … It’s really hard for these additional specialties. We have Cardiology up here, we have Pulmonology, but some of the smaller things like Rheumatology for rheumatoid arthritis, for osteoporosis and kidneys … how do you establish your practice up here? So hopefully, as focused as [Ebert Family Clinic] is in the community about being able to provide the care we want for our patients …  we’ll be able to get that door open for those specialties and help them establish their practice up here, which is our goal.

How do you get connected to these services like Genomind?

[This patient] came to me with Genomind. I had not heard of that before. He said, “I got on the right medications because this genetic testing gave [Compass Health] the ability to treat me properly.” [Certain health care providers in Denver] require it, almost, for every patient walking in their door as a prerequisite to help them make medication decisions. 

Genomind is a swab in the cheek. I think it’s huge, because we’re not able to “draw” neurochemicals. We’re not able to draw your blood and say, “oh, look, you’re deficient in serotonin.” Because that’s not an option, what’s the best way for us to figure out what’s the best medication for you? Because medications are very specific to what they’re treating. So the only thing we’ve been able to do for the last decade is to guess; to put you on something, and if it doesn’t work, then we know that’s not the thing. And that’s a terrible process, because it leads patients to trying five medications, over a ten-year period, and finally we get them on the right thing. But how frustrating that is for patients; they lose confidence in their providers, they lose confidence in the system, they feel neglected, they feel frustrated. And to have that stamina to even go through that process … I think we have a lot of patients drop off. [They] end up saying, “Forget it. Medications don’t work for me.” Then [they] become non-functional … their quality of life is hindered by their [unwillingness] to spend ten years trying five medications.

That is not the best process. And I think the people that went ahead and engineered Genomind said, “What else can we do? What if we went back to genetics? What if we went back to genes?” We can swab a 1-day old infant or a 95-year old man, and we are going to get their genetics. And when they did the Human Genome Project, and we got our entire genetic profile as human beings, the science behind Genomind was they were able to take anyone who’s been diagnosed with schizophrenia, people who are known bipolar, generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, took their DNA … laid them over each other, and said, “What gene is predominant in all these patients?”

So they were actually able to use hundreds of thousands of mental health patients to establish what genes these were that led to the cause of their mental illness. So now we’re able to send off DNA with a swab in the cheek. It’s not a perfect science, but it’s what we have.

Is this better than nothing? There’s so much controversy about this test. How can you think this is controversial when you come from a science background as a provider, as a physician. You’ve got this, or you have nothing to guide you for the mental health of these patients. If we have this over nothing, I will take this.

[Genomind testing] is not only [about] mental health disorders, but also [for] people [suffering from] eating disorders, difficulty losing weight, ADHD, alcohol addiction and propensity for opioid addiction. It would identify what patients we may never want to start on narcotics if at all possible. It tells us, “Don’t start this patient on this particular drug because they’re at risk for gaining weight with this drug, like as an atypical antipsychotic.” It would tell us which medications an alcoholic would respond to best, if they were wanting to quit drinking and needed medication assistance. We have a lot of kids who seem like they’re ADHD, but really they have signs of anxiety and depression as well. And it’s our job to distinguish [whether] it’s the ADHD that’s causing the depression and anxiety, or it’s the depression and anxiety that’s causing the inability to focus? It’s absolutely fascinating! I want the community to know that we’re offering that here at the clinic.

Is Genomind available to children?

We can test anyone of any age. We can swab the cheek of a one-day old. I actually had a mom in here that said she was tested positive for both genes for the lack of ability to metabolize L-methylfolate, which causes bipolar disorder or mood instability. She came in here with her 4-month old son and said, “When can I get him tested to know?”

So I actually asked Genomind, and Genomind said you could test a brand new newborn baby, which at some point may be the standard of practice!

But at this point, it’s hard to want to test that child, because we’re not able to treat that child [without symptoms]. Once that child becomes 6 or 8 years old, and they are having mood instability, they are showing signs of some sort of mental illness, we do realize we are able to identify this in children. We don’t need to wait until people are 18 to say they must have a mental illness. We are identifying that in the behavior of hyperactive two and three year olds, and we’re seeing them grow up to be bipolar adults. So we are seeing early signs and symptoms of mental illness in these children. 

Could we test a 6-year old who is showing signs of something and have them be positive for these genes and be able to supplement them with L-methylfolate or an approved psychiatric medication in the pediatric population based on their genetics? This is absolutely going in that direction. Genomind said they’re 100% approved for adult and pediatric testing.

How do you find balance for yourself and maintain a healthy lifestyle?

Working at this clinic actually provides me with the exact hours I need to have good work-life balance. That’s extremely important to Dr. Chris Ebert-Santos. When I started working here, she said, “What are your husband’s days off?” And I said, “Sunday-Monday,” she said, “Okay, well you’re not working Sunday-Monday then.” I just honestly couldn’t believe it, that my happiness was that important to her. I work reasonable hours. [Dr. Chris] provides me with the days off that will match my husband’s. I have great quality of life due to my husband. He’s an amazing person, wonderful and spirited, and we get along great. So we have that, and we have our two dogs, and we live a comfortable life up here. We love to do all the great stuff that Summit Countiers do: snowboarding, hiking, biking, camping, just getting outside in general together and playing with our dogs. And that’s what’s most important.

What have been your greatest takeaways from working in Summit County so far?

I think it’s running into that patient at the supermarket who, I know in the back of my head I have their diabetes controlled. To know that I’m specifically helping patients in my community. That I’m doing yoga next to someone [whose] blood pressure is controlled now because of me. I think that’s something really special and it’s not something that I had before when I worked in Denver, and I would come home and I would never see those people again. And then, having the opportunity in this clinic to deal with so many pediatric patients, since this was originally a pediatric clinic [before] expanding to adult services as well, which is amazing. But the amount of pediatrics in this clinic really improves both my exposure to every age group. I love kids. To have patients hug me in this office who have had a very challenging diagnosis … that “thank you” from patients is something I cannot replace.

Tara continues to be a passionate advocate for mental, women’s and sexual health, and a valuable resource as a health care practitioner. Ebert Family Clinic is proud to have her.

Roberto Santos is from the remote island of Saipan, in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. He has since lived in Japan and the Hawaiian Islands, and has made Colorado his current home, where he is a web developer, musician, avid outdoorsman and prolific reader. When he is not developing applications and graphics, you can find him performing with the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra, snowboarding Vail or Keystone, soaking in hot springs, or reading non-fiction at a brewery.