Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrea Wadley.
Andrea, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I have lived in North Texas since I was a first grader at Carlisle Elementary. When I graduated from Plano Senior High School, I moved across the metroplex to attend Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. After graduating with a biology degree, I worked for two years outside of the medical field. My continued love for medicine called me back, and I headed to San Antonio to complete medical school and pediatric training.
My husband and I traveled between Bedford and San Antonio during the first few years of our marriage with the goal of Bedford being our home. Gratefully, when the time came for me to move back, I secured a great position as a newborn hospital pediatrician. As a result, I worked in the baby delivery hospitals in Tarrant County for many years. In the time I spent as a hospitalist, I forged many great relationships and learned much from my physician and nurse colleagues.
One of the best things that I learned and received extra training in was the area of breastfeeding medicine. The skills that I gained in how to help new mothers with the difficult task of breastfeeding their newborn has been invaluable. I gained expertise in the medicine and science of breastfeeding as well as the hands-on skills. After much time and success as a newborn hospitalist, I began to contemplate my career. My goal was to return to general pediatrics.
I missed the long term relationships that are established between a family and their pediatrician. The reason that I became a pediatrician was to care for children of different ages and stages and supervise their health during their growing years. When I looked across the health care horizon and saw my options for becoming an outpatient pediatrician, I desired a practice that was different than what was available.
As I talked to more doctors about practicing medicine outside of the traditional health care model, I learned about a movement among primary care physicians called direct primary care. After researching this concept, I knew that this was the type of medical practice that I would like to have. I opened 127 Pediatrics in July 2018 as a direct primary care pediatric practice.
Pediatricians who practice direct primary care contract directly with their patients in order to provide affordable, individualized medical care to them. In this model, I am free from the constraints that fee for service medicine causes. Contracting with families directly and not accepting health insurance as a form of payment allows me to be free to take care of kids in a more efficient and personal way.
Through a monthly membership fee, I am able to provide longer appointments, the convenience of home visits, easy to schedule sick visits and direct access to me between appointments. The greatest benefit of a direct primary care practice both for me as the doctor and you as the patient is that I am able to maintain a smaller number of patients in my practice.
I named 127 Pediatrics after one of my favorite Psalms in the Bible. Psalm 127 reminds us that children are a blessing and a gift from the Lord. My faith is important to me, and I wanted a daily reminder of my purpose for choosing pediatrics as a career.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I have faced many obstacles and challenges in starting this practice. Most of them are business related challenges that all small business owners face. I have the added challenge of practicing medicine in such a new and different way.
The most challenging thing that I have encountered in starting 127 Pediatrics is communicating with people why I have chosen to not accept medical insurance as a form of payment in my pediatric practice. We (myself included) have gotten so used to handing over our insurance card and exchanging it for medical services.
It is understandable that people want to use their medical insurance because often, they pay a lot of money for it. Direct primary care challenges the notion that there needs to be someone that comes between the patient and the doctor. By contracting directly with parents for the care of their children, I don’t have to maintain a large staff to file insurance claims and chase down payments. I am free to practice medicine in a way that serves the patient and the family’s needs.
Another challenging thing for me as a small pediatric practice is vaccines. Many insurance plans cover vaccines as part of routine well-child care. This is a great thing for kids but makes it more challenging for cash only pediatric practices such as mine.
Vaccine costs are high and can be prohibitive for many families. I have found some ways around the vaccine issue and can help most every family get the vaccines that their children need in a cost-effective manner.
Please tell us about 127 Pediatrics.
127 Pediatrics is a home visit cash membership pediatric practice. I provide comprehensive pediatric primary care in the comfort of your own home. You contract directly with me, and I provide high-quality personalized care for your children. Your membership entitles you too well-child checks, sick visits, telemedicine visits and direct access to me via text, phone or email between visits.
Vaccine administration and access to your child’s electronic health record are also part of your membership. I have a small office in Colleyville and travel within a 15-mile radius for home visits. I also offer lactation visits and tongue tie evaluations and procedures as one-time visits. My heart and part of the goal of owning my own practice is to help first-time mothers learn how to successfully breastfeed their new babies.
I offer these services to families that are part of my membership practice and as a la carte services for families that are not part of the practice. I am proud to be able to take care of the kids in my community and serve their families. This way of practicing medicine has given me deep personal satisfaction. I feel like I am being the kind of doctor that I always dreamed of being.
My time is spent listening to kids and parents, taking care of their medical needs and teaching them to take ownership of their children’s health and well being. Parents know that they can get ahold of me with questions and that I get back to them quickly. My proudest moments since starting this practice in July have been the gratitude from the families that I serve.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My favorite memories from childhood revolve around the summers that my sister and I would spend at our grandparents’ house. We would spend a few weeks with them each summer eating ice cream, playing cards after dinner, running around with the neighborhood kids and learning how to put a worm on a hook in order to catch a fish.
My grandma would teach us how to sew, do craft projects and bake yummy treats. She would buy us sticker books and let us stay up late watching movies. Grandpa taught us how to tell knock-knock jokes and say tongue twisters. His sense of humor was contagious, and we spent a lot of our time with him laughing. He also taught us how to find discarded treasures on the side of the road and re-purpose them as useful things.
My favorite memories of him was all of the time and energy that he spent teaching two little girls how to catch a fish. We looked up to him for most everything. My sister and I would sit on grandpa’s tailgate and sing songs while he drove us to the lake for our fishing adventures.
The most important thing that our grandparents taught my sister and I was how to have a deep faith in the Lord. They took us to church and taught us Bible stories, but more importantly, they taught us what a living a life of faith looked like.
Contact Info:
- Address: 33 Main Street Suite 160 Colleyville, TX 76034
- Website: https://127pediatrics.com
- Phone: 817.476.0675
- Email: drwadley@127pediatrics.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onetwentysevenpediatrics/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/127Pediatrics/
Image Credit:
Candace Randolph, Mike Reyher
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