Christian Doctor Works in Her Home on Her Terms at Her Pace

c. 2006 Religion News Service DAMASCUS, Ore. _ Sixteen short steps tell you worlds about what matters most to Beverly De La Bruere. Pass through the double doors of her sky blue ranch-style home, and you’re standing next to a poster-sized 90-day planner that tracks a busy family life. A few steps to the right […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

DAMASCUS, Ore. _ Sixteen short steps tell you worlds about what matters most to Beverly De La Bruere.

Pass through the double doors of her sky blue ranch-style home, and you’re standing next to a poster-sized 90-day planner that tracks a busy family life.


A few steps to the right and through another door, you enter a clinic with patient charts stored under an old kitchen stove hood and a single exam room.

Keep walking, take a step down, and you’ve crossed into a sprawling family room that, by the way, doubles every other Saturday night as a church.

Dr. De La Bruere is doing what many of us dream of: living life precisely on her terms. Once upon a time, almost like a connect-the-dots picture, she figured out what she valued most _ her family, her patients, her faith _ then set about creating a life that proved she meant it.

At the time, opening a clinic in her home bucked conventional wisdom. Today, others envy her approach to practicing medicine, and balancing her life.

“A lot of people could do this,” the 56-year-old physician says. “They just don’t have the boldness to do it.”

About 18 years ago, De La Bruere took a step that, in the world of 1980s medicine, was bold indeed: She walked away from a job at an established clinic and set up a family practice in her home.

It was a decision born of a desire to be close to her infant son but crafted with meticulous attention to the bottom line. She and her husband, Marc, concluded that working from home would dramatically cut overhead costs. That, in turn, would allow her to work part-time yet spend lots of time with each patient.


“I knew this type of practice could take over your life,” she says. “I decided I could set boundaries and still maintain a practice.”

She limits the time she sees patients to about 20 hours a week. She doesn’t make hospital rounds or do surgeries.

That gives her time to work out four times a week at Curves, keeping up a regimen that led to a 35-pound weight loss. She goes to Bible study Thursday mornings; does quilting, scrapbooking and embroidery when she can; gardens with her husband, who is the clinic’s office manager; and hosts a church service in their home.

And most important to her, she’s been around to see her sons, Daniel, 18, and Andrew, 15, grow up.

“I have the greatest job in the world,” she says. “I make a decent living, but I choose how I do it.”

Jim Kronenberg, chief operating officer for the Oregon Medical Association, says he can think of few, if any, doctors among the 9,000 practicing in Oregon who work from home. But, he adds, home practices once were fairly common.


That started to change in the mid-1970s, when doctors began to group together in larger and larger blocs to forge negotiating strength against insurance companies, says Dr. John Saultz, chairman of Oregon Health and Science University’s department of family medicine.

De La Bruere spends about 25 percent of her revenue on overhead costs such as labor, supplies and utilities; the average for most doctors is between 40 percent and 60 percent. And while many family-practice doctors see 10 to 12 patients during a single half-day session, Saultz says, De La Bruere sees 20 to 30 patients a week. What sets her apart even more, and what resonates with her patients, is the time she spends with them: She schedules 40 minutes a person.

“She doesn’t try to rush you through,” says Rocky Hill, 43, of Estacada, Ore., a patient who followed her from the Estacada clinic where she first worked and whose wife, children and extended family see her now. “She’ll stand there and listen to you about what your problems are. A lot of times it takes more than the 10 or 15 minutes most doctors take, and that’s OK.”

Wanda Crisp, 45, of Vancouver, Wash., found De La Bruere in the Yellow Pages about eight years ago.

“I’ve never had a doctor pay more attention to how you’re doing,” she says.

De La Bruere says she is careful not to push her religion on patients, but if she senses an opening, she will bring it up.

Crisp raised the issue first.

“I was curious about this doctor: How did she balance everything so well and take care of everyone so well?” she recalls. “I didn’t understand that, so she told me: It was her faith in God.”


A few patients attend the church service she and her husband host in their home every other Saturday, when 10 to 25 people gather to spend an evening of prayer, music, Bible study and fellowship.

It was her faith that gave “a small-town girl from Kansas” the self-confidence to practice medicine. “Because of my faith in God,” she says now, “I realized I wouldn’t have to make life-and-death decisions alone.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS. STORY MAY END HERE.)

De La Bruere acknowledges there are tradeoffs to being a part-time, home-based doctor: no paid benefits, no health insurance, no paid vacations. And as a part-time doctor, she takes home about $75,000 a year, substantially less than doctors with bigger practices.

Yet, she has no regrets.

“I’ve supported my family from day one,” she says. “We have a major family vacation every year. We’re not suffering.”

She can even afford to dream.

Last year, she and her husband bought a second home in Carver, which he is remodeling and which opened Wednesday as Clackamas River House, a bed and breakfast and religious retreat center.

Someday, she’d love to run a Christian camp and travel six weeks a year. She also wants to offer out-patient treatment for narcotic addicts.


For a small-town Kansas girl who never intended to be a doctor, she’s found her niche and crafted a life she loves. “I love dealing with people, I love helping people, I love talking with people. I wouldn’t have gotten that had I not become a doctor.”

MO/RB END RNS

(Gwenda Richards Oshiro writes for The Oregonian in Portland, Ore.)

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