Could A Rural Health Facility In Gillette Really Be The Next Mayo Clinic?

GILLETTE — Patty Hoskinson saved the best for last on an exclusive tour with Cowboy State Daily of the new Hoskinson Health & Wellness Clinic. 

She was practically skipping across the room like a schoolgirl in her excitement, right into a large, white, circular device that resembled something straight out of a "Star Wars" movie.

“Where can I beam you up to?” she asked with an impish grin, holding out her arms like she was readying herself for an imaginary flight right into space. 

“This is the Vector,” she said, practically beaming herself. “And the Mayo Clinic has the first one, and then we have the second one of this caliber.”

The device has 95 cameras in all, but is not used for beaming people around space. It’s actually a state-of-the-art dermatology device. And right now, there are just two of this latest and greatest model in the country, Hoskinson said.  

“What you do is you stand here like this in your skivvies — your underwear and bra — and in 30 seconds it will take a picture of every mole on your body.”

But speed is not the thing that makes this device truly special, her husband, Dr. Mark Hoskinson chimed in.

“Anybody can sit there and take a picture,” he said. “This rates the moles with AI (Artificial Intelligence) and decides whether it’s bad or it’s OK. And, if it’s bad, it will tell you to take it off. If it’s OK, then you can come do it again in a year.”

All the images are saved and at the ready, so in successive years the AI can tell if there are concerning changes. That means skin cancers are spotted much earlier than usual, which can save a significant number of lives. 

Melanoma is one of the most common cancers in the United States, and each year more than 8,000 people die because it was not noticed in time. 

That’s particularly tragic because melanoma caught in the first five years is highly treatable, with a survival rate exceeding 99%. 

All it would really take to save those lives is 30 seconds in a Vector machine like the one that is now open for business in Gillette.

The Mayo Clinic Of The West

Like most hospitals, saving lives is the primary aim of the Hoskinson Health & Wellness Clinic. They just want to do it in a much bigger way than most medical clinics in the country. 

And they want to do it in rural communities, which have struggled in recent times to keep health care access, precisely because those communities are struggling. 

“Our vision is, my son wants it to be the Mayo Clinic of the West,” Patricia said. “And this is a multi-specialty clinic. We have almost every specialty.”

That means people who are seeing a primary care physician can access any one of a number of specialties during the same visit. No more fractured health care. 

“If the primary care physicians find something that’s not right, they can go down the hall to the cardiologist and ask, ‘Would you mind listening real quick?’” Patricia said. “Or if their lab tests come back, go see our neurologist, or our kidney doctor. 

"We have a neurologist, we have two rheumatologists, we have an allergist — you name it, we have it.”

Bringing In The Specialists

So far, the Hoskinson clinic in Gillette has not experienced difficulties in recruiting specialists to the clinic, despite the fact it’s in one of the least populated states in the nation. 

Rural communities across the nation have struggled to attract medical talent, but the Hoskinson clinic is offering something many doctors want. 

It’s an experience that doesn’t put bottom-line profits first and isn’t pushing them to see a new patient every 15 minutes. 

The doctors the Hoskinsons have recruited can all tell horror stories about the kind of medical environments that private equity is creating for medical care professionals. 

It was something that by and large they were seeking to escape, even if it meant quitting medicine altogether.

When cardiologist Dr. Dan Davidovich was recruited from Washington, he had already all but decided to retire from healthcare. 

“I was tired of random Canadian investment firms purchasing the health care facility I worked at and asking me to squeeze people for every dime,” he said. “And I had gotten to a point where I had said I’m just going to apply for a handyman job at the dog shelter nearby. Stop being a doctor.”

Friends of his couldn’t believe it. 

“Wow what a waste,” he said they told him. 

“So, a few friends convinced me just to interview in a few places,” he said. “And, as luck would have it, one of the few places I talked to was these guys.”

During the first interview, Davidovich laid it on the line.

“I’m on the phone and I’m telling the recruiter, like, you don’t want me,” he said. “I’ll report you if you do this. I’ll tell the Medicare Center for fraud prevention.”

We Get You

Davidovich’s warning had the recruiter laughing out loud.

“She’s like, ‘Let me tell you about Mark and William Hoskinson and what their situation was before, and how they almost retired, too, and how they’re trying to do things a little bit different,'” Davidovich said. “And I was like, ‘Oh darn, I guess I’m not going to be a handyman just yet. I’m going to keep working as a doctor.'”

After an in-person interview, to satisfy himself that this wasn’t too good to be true, Davidovich was all in. 

“They want to build something for the community,” Davidovich said.

That community-building is what attracted Dr. Jatinder Aulakh as well, who is an allergist and clinical immunologist.

“There’s a mission, a long-term mission here,” he said. “I always feel like this community around us deserves better care and we can provide them better care. This whole system is set up for that, because when you talk to the patients all day long, they just feel so frustrated that everything is so fragmented.”

That leads to “bad care,” Aulakh said. But it’s not an issue for the Hoskinson clinic, since it has so many specialties in house, all in one place.

Experimental Medicine And Every Day Medical Practice

Mayo-like equipment and an environment where people aren’t just numbers aren’t the only perks, though. 

The doctors also like all the experimental research that’s being woven into the fabric of everyday care at this clinic. That makes their work part of a vanguard that’s pushing to improve the entire practice of medicine. 

“What we do is a study, and the studies, everything is free for the patient,” Mark said. “We pay for the studies and then what we do is we have a goal, and we look at (the patients) before that, whatever we’re measuring, and then we give (the patients) their therapy, and we look at (the patients) after that.”

All such studies must be FDA-approved, so there is an individual on staff whose main focus is gaining approvals for that kind of research whenever patients have not had good outcomes with other therapies.

Among the many areas the clinic is researching are stem cell therapies that use fat-cell derived stem cells, which are referred to as mesenchymal.

“Our stem cells are not embryos,” Mark said. “They’re from fat cells. So, we take the fat out and we spin it down and get the stem cells out of it. Those are mesenchymal stem cells, which are very different than embryonic stem cells.”

There’s no potential for mesenchymal stem cells to develop into an individual, Mark said. 

“That way we just avoid that issue, because it is a huge issue as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “So, it’s safe, because you can take those stem cells, grow them, and then inject them back into the patient, and guess what, you have repaired something. Like the lungs get better, etc. etc.”

The Mayo Clinic has also been doing research into stem cell therapies, which can generate healthy cells to replace damaged cells, whether that damage is caused by disease or chronic conditions.

But those procedures are not yet covered by insurance, Mark acknowledged.

“But we’re working on it,” he said. 

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Another cutting-edge technology they’re working on is called transcranial magnetic stimulation for patients who are depressed but not responding well to medications.

“They’re still depressed,” Mark said. “So, we give them transcranial magnetic stimulation. What you do is you go in and map the brain, and then they stimulate the part of the brain with waves that are depressed the scan.”

After a six-week course of treatment, 30% of patients feel better, Mark said, while an additional 30% improve, but still need some medications. 

“There’s 30% it doesn’t work for, at least at the protocols that they have now,” he said. “We have a lot of studies ongoing.”

Some of the future studies will involve hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

“We’ve bought a building in downtown, and we’re going to have hyperbaric medicine there, a hyperbaric chamber,” Patricia added. “People will be able to sit in a lounge chair and receive 100% oxygen. 

"And we’re going to be doing studies. It’s for wound care, for memory, and you can do it for health, for your wrinkles.” 

Eighteen different procedures are paid for by insurance right now, Mark said, though anti-aging procedures isn’t among them.

“But we are definitely going to be doing that as soon as that is set up,” he said. “By the end of the year, we should be pretty close to having that set up.”

Art On Every Wall

The clinic, though, is much more than just a dry and sterile medical facility. 

It’s meant to be a legacy for their son, Charles Hoskinson, who is one of Ethereum’s five founders, and the CEO and founder of Input Output Global, the company behind the Cardano blockchain. 

“He said he could have spent his money on yachts or something,” Patricia said. “But this is for health care, and for people to enjoy their experience.”

And enjoy their experience people will, because inside this maze of cutting-edge medical care there is also a trail of world-class, phenomenal experiences unlike anything anywhere else in the world.

The trail starts with the Terrazzo floors in the entry way, which are made of chips of marble and granite poured in place and polished to a shine. 

They are a symbol, for those who know, of the beginnings Charles Hoskinson’s cryptocurrency journeys.

Charles flew from the Denver International Airport when he was starting Ethereum, and then ultimately traveled to at least 80 countries in the process of starting his own company, Patricia said. 

Each time he returned home, there was that familiar Terrazzo floor to greet him. 

So, the floor in the entry way of the Hoskinson clinic, and in a variety of other areas, is the very Terrazzo floor that Hoskinson became so familiar with from the Denver International Airport.

“It’s also very easy to take care of,” Mark added. “It looks nice for a long time.”

That’s just the beginning though. The waiting area of the clinic has been modeled after a Swedish hotel that Charles is familiar with, which also blends in western textures like the buffalo cowhide panels behind the front desk. 

Paintings adorn many of the walls, many of which are Charles’ favorite artists, like Russian-American artist Vladmir Kush, founder of a genre called metaphorical realism. 

Kush has become famous around the globe for fantasy portraits that draw parallels between seemingly unrelated objects and themes, like his painting of the Last Supper, which imagines Jesus as a giant sunflower and all the apostles as plants. 

“It’s just a beautiful piece,” Patricia said.

The kind of piece that invites people to stare, and to think, and to look at it again whenever they get a chance.

The Book Of The Dead

Conversation starters are on nearly every wall of the clinic, and in every nook and cranny. Not all of them are artwork. 

Among these many treasures are Roman coins, and a fungible token that was flown into space. There’s a replica of the 14-foot-long Book of the Dead, covered in Egyptian symbols and figures. It looks like it came straight from a museum.

“On Charles’ birthday last year, he went to visit Egypt and the pyramids, and they closed down the pyramids just for him, and he got a private tour,” Patricia said. “And then they lit up the pyramids for his birthday, and they gave him this beautiful replica of the Book of the Dead.”

One of the Egyptian doctors at the clinic later told the Hoskinsons the symbols on the scroll include the codes to the afterlife. 

A living wall of moss adorns a different wall, and there are floor-to-ceiling videos that stream 72 prerecorded hours from scenic locations from around the globe.

“Charlie really wanted to share his experiences that he had throughout the world,” Mark said. “Because there’s some beautiful places that he went to, and by having these 72-hour pictures of it, he can show the people without going to Japan or without going to Switzerland. He can show them the beauty of the place, and that’s what he wants to do.”

Rain Forest Frogs, Caribbean Fish, And The Infinity Room

Not all of the cool stuff is hanging out on walls. Some of them are hanging out in corners, while others have become entire rooms of their own 

There’s also something called a vivarium, for example, which is a fancy Latin name for an enclosed area where animals or plants can be observed and studied. 

In this vivarium there will be poisonous dart frogs from the Amazon rain forest. While their name suggests the frogs are poisonous, these particular frogs are not. 

That’s because they are being fed fruit flies instead of the poisonous ants that are their usual diet.

Two aquariums in a different area, meanwhile, will contain fish from the Caribbean and Hawaii. These are being built into the wall, while an entire room is devoted to the pumps that will maintain appropriate saltwater concentration for these exotic fish. 

“Charles wants this to be beautiful, and he wants everybody to have an experience when they come to the doctor,” Patricia said. “Most people don’t like to go to the doctor, but in this case, you might want to say, ‘Well, what kind of fish do they have today? Or I might want to go into the infinity room or whatever.”

The infinity room is a chamber of mirrors designed to repeat the same image down to infinity. 

There’s an infinity statue at the entrance of the clinic as well, which is like looking into an entire universe of abstract shapes that never stop, no matter how long you look.

The room is meant to be immersion art.

“There are people in Wyoming who do music to be therapeutic and make people feel better,” Mark said. “And we believe art does the same thing. Beautiful art will make people heal faster and better. And there are studies that show that.”

The Napatorium 

Not everything is high-browed or artistic. Some things are just fun. Like the two robots which walk and talk. One is a replica of the robot in the television series, “Lost in Space,” while the other is a replica from the movie “The Forbidden Planet.”

“The whole Hoskinson family are big sci-fi buffs,” Patricia said. “And in our new addition we’re going to have Godzilla and Mothra.”

“Mothra vs. Godzilla” was a 1965 Japanese film that pits Godzilla against a genetically engineered insect-god called Mothra.

Dinosaur fossils will be hanging from the ceiling in the new addition that’s coming along, which adds another 62,000 square feet to the facility in Gillette, which totals 73,500 square feet right now, and is planned for an eventual 100,000 square feet.

The new wing also includes a “napatorium” for Charles, which refers to a technique Thomas Edison was famous for using. Edison would nap with a ball in each hand, which would wake him up almost the instant he fell asleep. 

In that semi-lucid mental state, the mind is half dreaming, half awake, so it’s easier to remember the insights that come along. Science calls it a hypnagogic state, but most people would probably just call these Eureka moments. 

“He takes power naps, OK,” Patricia said. “And so that’s where he gets all these brilliant ideas.”

If the clinic in Gillette seems like it came from a dream, the anecdote helps illuminate why. 

It is a dream from start to finish, one that’s intended to grow from Gillette, Wyoming, to other communities, with satellite clinics to boost the level of care available across the state.

“Most family-run clinics across the United States have been bought up by merger groups or hospitals,” Patricia said. “But this is my son, Charles’ legacy.” 

“We’re going to build smaller places in small towns,” Mark said. “And then if they need to see our other doctors, they can come here.”

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.