 Meet Dr. Sandra Koehn, DO, owner of Planted Direct Primary Care! Planted DPC officially opened in April 2026, built on a model that puts the patient and physician relationship back at the center of care. No insurance billing for visits, no rushed appointments, no clicking boxes and moving on. Patients pay a flat monthly membership fee and get direct access to Dr. Koehn - including her cell phone - with same or next day availability and appointments that actually go as long as they need to. Dr. Koehn is also a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, offering osteopathic manipulation treatment alongside primary care - think of it as if chiropractic and massage had a baby, and you have osteopathy! And Planted DPC is a faith-based practice, rooted in Psalm 1:3, though patients of all spiritual backgrounds are warmly welcomed. What really stuck with Kara: Sandra described how mental health so often goes unnoticed and untreated because it masks itself as insomnia, palpitations, or other physical symptoms. When a provider has the time to really listen and peel back the layers, the real picture emerges. That is the kind of care Planted DPC is built to provide - and it is exactly why this connection with Tree of Hope Counseling makes so much sense. If you have ever left a doctor's appointment feeling unheard or rushed, Planted DPC was built for you. We loved this conversation with Dr. Koehn and are so glad she is part of our community. Read the full conversation below! When was your business founded and what inspired its development? Planted Direct Primary Care was born in the summer of 2025, and it was an idea that I toyed around with for a while, and then officially opened on April 7th of this year, 2026. It's a membership based primary care model of health care that offers direct access to your primary care doctor, longer patient appointments, and personalized, tailored care for patients who are just sick of being a number. We do this by charging a flat monthly membership fee without the need to bill insurance for visits. How does your business support mental health and wellness in our local community? I think there's an epidemic of gaslighting by the health field in general, leaving patients feeling unheard. And sometimes there are just things that are simply helped by just listening really - listening to a person's concern and then making them really feel heard and answering their questions, and they walk out of there feeling great. No patient likes that feeling of the person that is in charge of my health care is not taking the time of day to listen to me, and I'm not heard, and my needs are unmet. And so they leave, and there's an element of distrust there. They don't trust that their doctor is doing the right thing by them because they don't feel like they have all the information they need. And, I mean, it's not the doctor's fault in a big health system, because they just don't have the time - they're pushed to see lots and lots of patients, one after the other. And they try their best to afford you however much time they can, but they also have a lot of things that they need to ask and get, you know, because of the quality metrics and things that they're held to. I've heard a lot of patients tell me “my doctor doesn't listen to me - they don't hear my concern.” And maybe they do address it, but it's very superficial or on the fly, and that really contributes to health and wellness, because then patients are Googling or using AI to try to self diagnose. The other aspect of it is that sometimes mental health requires medication, and there are not a lot of psychiatric prescribers around. Unfortunately, there's just a high demand for them, and there aren't that many - so a lot of it falls on primary care. And when primary care doctors are pushed to see lots of people and they have so many other things that they want to talk to you about, like your preventative care and your blood work, and then we have to also now spend time addressing mental health, and that's usually a longer conversation, PCPs don't have the time to do that. When you allot the time, and you really get into the weeds, so to speak, with a patient about what it is that they're feeling, and offer therapeutic listening - to peel back those layers - until you figure out what exactly the problem is. And then that way you can effectively treat it, whether by prescribing medication or suggesting therapy or whatever it is. I can't even tell you how many times patients come in and say, “I need a sleeping pill”, and we uncover anxiety, or life stress, by taking the time to learn more about the circumstances. That's what doesn't happen when providers are rushed. And so mental health can really go unnoticed and untreated for a very long time because it's masking itself as insomnia or palpitations or other things. What makes your business different from others that may offer similar service? My business is a primary care clinic that operates under a direct care model of healthcare. A lot of people around our area have heard of “concierge medicine”, and there are some slight distinctions between concierge medicine and direct care, so I'd like to clarify that. Direct care is essentially a direct contract between a patient and a physician - we remove a third party payer entirely, so we do not bill insurance for visits. Patients pay a monthly membership fee the same way you would pay a gym membership. Then you go to the gym, and you pay your monthly fee but don’t pay each time you go - you can go there every day, if you feel the need, or you can go there once a month or never. A monthly membership model where all of your primary care services and visits are completely covered - is how my practice works. In office testing is all included, and patients get direct access to me - they get my cell phone, and they can get me anytime, whenever they need to. It also allows us for smaller patient loads, so patients can be seen by me the same day or next day if they need to. I recently posted something about a lonely waiting room, about our waiting room having an identity crisis, because patients don't wait in the waiting room. Now concierge medicine has some overlap. They still do direct access to your doctor and really limited wait times, longer appointments, but concierge clinics actually bill insurance. Traditionally, concierge clinics bill insurance for visits, so you still pay per visit. In addition, you pay a retainer to your concierge clinic or doctor. With direct care like my business, you just pay that membership and I do not bill insurance at all for your primary care visits - but if a patient needs to go to see a specialist, or they need to go get an imaging test done, like an x ray or something, or they need to go to the lab to do blood tests, they can still use their insurance for those. Just this morning. I spent almost two hours with my new patient, and we talked about anything and everything under the sun, and there are still things we didn't get to so the ability to have longer appointment times and shorter wait times is the benefit of direct care. It’s also important to note that I’m a DO (Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine) and practice osteopathic manipulation treatment - think of it as if chiropractic and massage had a baby, it would be osteopathy! A little more focus on alignment than a massage therapist, a little bit less cracking than a chiropractor. Lastly, Planted Direct Primary Care, as a reflection of me, is a faith based practice. The name comes from Psalm 1:3, which is a verse that I've loved my whole life and it's just part of who I am. And not to say that I don't accept patients of all spiritual walks of life and all faiths, but if they do happen to be aligned on those types of values, I openly offer to pray with patients and kind of address some of their spiritual needs as well if they feel so inclined. How does your own journey or life experience shape how you show up in your work? I really try to live out my faith in all facets of my life, and I found it really difficult to live it out in certain situations when I'm not in control of what I can or cannot do in a big health system setting. And so just stepping out of that, and owning my own practice, and being able to practice in a way that does not morally injure me - that's been a really important part of it. When I was first trying to open the practice, I wondered - how open should I kind of be about my faith? And it was empowering to know that I can practice how I want to, and my faith is a really big part of who I am - my upbringing and our family - and in the name of transparency, I want people to know who I am and where I'm coming from. You know, life gets confusing and complicated, and so it's always really good to have that anchor to go back to and say, “Okay, does it align with this?” Some people want a faith based practice, and they want a physician who will pray for them and with them, and some don't want that, and that's okay - that's totally fine. And then the other experience was being in a practice for eight years in a big health system and it was just ingrained that you saw patients, click the boxes, go faster, see more people, and make sure your notes are done. You had to document correctly or insurance doesn’t pay. That pressure, especially after Covid where is just started to feel corporate - where it wasn’t just the patient and physician - the insurance company, hospital administration, and other things were just inserted into that relationship. The patient/doctor relationship suffers and it ends up taking the joy out of practicing medicine. Doctors choose primary care because they value relationships and they value time with their patients, and you can’t have a relationship without time - you can’t put a time limit on getting to know someone. So when you really press primary care to increase volume and to see more patients faster, you’re essentially sucking the life force out of what makes primary care important - the direct care model just restores that essentially. Business ownership can be stressful - how do you take care of your own mental health and wellness? Since I’m so early to this process, I’m trying to learn my boundaries. I have a couple mentors that are part of what is a huge direct primary care community and I keep hearing boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. I hear “start how you want to finish” - so setting a good rhythm in the beginning so that when you are busier, the routines can continue. Another thing I am doing is protecting some time in my week, because with direct care, I’m a one-woman-show, and on call 24/7, but also patients are very respectful of my time, and use that access for emergencies. I do limit access on Sundays - I disconnect - so patients know to reach out Saturday, use urgent care if it can’t wait, and I’ll talk to you on Monday. If people were to take away a feeling or message after experiencing your business, what would you want that to be? I would want them to walk away and say “I feel seen and I feel heard here - this person knows me”. I’ve always wanted to have the time to learn while I practice, and now I have the time to do some research and do more education with patients. Check out the website at: planteddpc.com Social Media: @sandrakoehndo
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