Your zip code shouldn’t determine your life expectancy—but in many American cities, it does. In this eye-opening conversation, San Antonio vascular surgeon Dr. Lyssa Ochoa talks with us, your hosts Camille Hall-Ortega and Marcus Goodyear, about the stark health disparities in our communities. She highlights a 20-year gap in life expectancy between San Antonio neighborhoods just miles apart. This issue has complicated roots—including historical practices like redlining—and today some communities are seeing higher rates of diabetes, amputations, and other chronic illnesses. Through her work at the SAVE Clinic, Dr. Ochoa advocates fiercely for equitable healthcare, investing in underserved neighborhoods, and offering compassionate, accessible care. Join us as we discuss why true community health means caring for our neighbors.
00:00:00:00 – 00:00:12:09
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00:00:12:11 – 00:02:20:21
Camille Hall-Ortega
I was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. My parents met and married on the east side of the city. But later, when my sisters and I came along, my parents were faced with some tough decisions much of their life. Their previous church family, their friends that were like blood relatives. We’re all situated on the southeast and east side of the city.
But even back then, my parents knew that when it came to our schooling was going to be a better chance of more opportunity if they moved across town. So they did. They worked hard and insisted that their girls would grow up as Northside Independent School District kids. But what led my parents to think this way? Was it just in my parent’s imagination that there might be some opportunity differences and variations in the quality of education we’d receive simply based on the zip code we lived in?
Of course not. In fact, it’s not just opportunity gaps in schooling that exist from one neighborhood to the next. But things like city infrastructure, types of businesses, quality of sidewalks and streets, safety of living environments. Access to healthy food and even access to health care in very a great deal within a city in San Antonio. There is a 20 year gap in life expectancy between Southside and Northside residents.
That’s not hyperbole. Though it may sound as if it must be. And as we’re faced with startling statistics like these, not just in San Antonio, but all over the US, we’re left with the question what do we do about it? From the Age Gap Foundation, this is The Echoes Podcast. On today’s episode, we’re welcoming Dr. Lyssa Ochoa. She’s a board certified vascular surgeon in San Antonio.
And after recognizing the gaps in care by ZIP code, Dr. Ochoa founded the San Antonio Vascular and Endovascular or Save clinic. She works to improve access and compassionate care for diabetics across the city, and has partnered with other organizations to develop amputation prevention programs and raise awareness for equitable access to health care. We recently featured Lisa in an Echo’s magazine article, and we’re thrilled to have her here today.
I’m here with my co-host Marcus Goodyear. Welcome, Lyssa.
00:02:20:23 – 00:02:44:09
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
Thank you so much for having me. Camille and Marcus. It’s such an honor.
Marcus Goodyear
Yeah. We’re so glad you’re here.
Camille Hall-Ortega
Now, I know we have lots to dig into, but perhaps the best place to start is with that alarming statistic. We shared that there is a 20 year gap in life expectancy between San Antonio’s south side and north side residents. Can you tell us more about that?
00:02:44:12 – 00:04:11:28
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
The fact that lifespan varies can vary up to 28. North and South has a lot to do with everything that you just mentioned in the beginning. But when we want to look at, you know, the things that most people think about is direct access to health care. And that means two things. One of them is, access to health insurance.
So the reality is that Texas has the most uninsured patients. We ranked last, in the country as far as how many uninsured we have. And there’s no doubt that lack of access to, health insurance is part of it. But even so, lack of access to health care itself is very different, North and south. And what happens is we don’t have enough primary care doctors.
We don’t have enough pediatricians. We don’t have enough specialists. And what’s happening is that our patients on the South side, our patients, our community, or people on the South side begin to suffer chronic mental conditions very, very early in life. So I am seeing patients that are in their early 30s and 40s with uncontrolled diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol.
They’re suffering heart attacks, strokes. They’re going into kidney failure, needing dialysis. They’re going into heart failure. And the conditions that or complications that we’re used to seeing in the elderly population of more maybe 70s and 80s. We are seeing, you know, 30 and 40 year olds. And so it is the combination of all of that of not having insurance, not having access to health care, health literacy.
00:04:12:00 – 00:04:12:24
Camille Hall-Ortega
Wow.
00:04:12:27 – 00:04:18:27
Marcus Goodyear
Texas is last in health insurance. How I mean, how did we get there?
00:04:18:29 – 00:05:21:17
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
Well, I think one of the issues is Texas has not expanded Medicaid. And when that happened during the ACA, the federal government was giving states extra funding to expand Medicaid. And so the reality is, we have a lot of patients, a lot of communities that can’t afford private health insurance that maybe are not employed. And they fall in between kind of a window of what the ACA or the Affordable Care Act has that you can get online at healthcare.gov.
And then what qualifies them for Medicaid? And it’s that gap that makes it hard. But the reality is there’s another gap. Not only is there a gap in do they qualify for some kind of health insurance. But what I have seen on the South side, when I see patients, I’ve had some that have come without insurance. And what I’ve learned is once I pair them with just the right navigator, someone who will sit with them and see what their finances are, see what their medical needs are.
I really find how to pair them and guide them step by step to get a plan that’s best for them. In my personal experience, I’d say over 90% of those patients are still insurable.
00:05:21:19 – 00:05:55:12
Camille Hall-Ortega
So advocacy you’re seeing advocacy is key here as well.
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
Advocacy and helping people get insurance.
Camille Hall-Ortega
Now I mentioned that you work a lot specifically with diabetics, and I’m wondering if you can tell us a little bit more about diabetes, because I know there is often confusion between type one diabetes, type two diabetes, then people you know are like, are you causing your problems? Or you know that that kind of thing or didn’t you get yourself here kind of deal?
Can you just unpack that for us and kind of shed some light?
00:05:55:15 – 00:07:58:19
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
Sure. I’m actually going to unpack it a little more because I’m a vascular surgeon. So inherently my patients I don’t take care of diabetes myself. The condition itself, I take care of its complications. And so the reason that I see a lot of diabetics is that diabetes affects all the blood vessels in the body. And so the difference between type one diabetes, which means that you actually don’t produce any insulin at all.
They say this is the one that you were like when you get when you’re younger, I think is what most people think of it as, but usually it’s some kind of autoimmune thing that shuts down your pancreas and you don’t produce any insulin. And so you’ll hear doctors call these as a brittle diabetic, meaning it is like that on an off switch with insulin.
Like if you eat something, you definitely need insulin to turn it off. You can’t wear type two. Diabetes is actually, a result of insulin resistance. Initially you produce insulin, but your cells don’t respond to that insulin. And what that means is so insulin is a signal that tells your cells, hey, bring that sugar into the cell to use it.
Whether it’s a muscle cell or a fat cell and it’s unresponsive to that signal. And so that’s why there’s so many different more medications to either stimulate producing more insulin or to make it more, receptive to that signal. And so type two diabetes is in a, what we call an acquired condition, meaning over time, the reason that these patients, both type one and type two end up seeing me is diabetes affects every blood vessel in the body.
And I try to explain to patients that it affects the small, tiny micro vessels in the body and diabetes. It usually affects the larger blood vessels in the feet and work its way up the leg, and the larger blood vessels in your heart that can cause a heart attack the blood vessels to your kidneys, it can begin to damage your kidneys and how they end up in dialysis.
The blood vessels to the brain that can cause a stroke. And then, like I mentioned, the small vessels in the eyes and the retina. And, you know, diabetes is a leading cause of blindness and a vision loss in San Antonio. And so that.
00:07:58:19 – 00:07:59:25
Marcus Goodyear
Is in San Antonio?
00:07:59:28 – 00:08:31:19
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
Yes. And that’s the most leading cause of the reason people are on dialysis. And Antonio, now, for example, in other areas, a hypertension or high blood pressure may be a bigger cause for people to end up on dialysis. But in San Antonio, it’s diabetes. We have on the south side very high rates of diabetes overall in San Antonio, Albert County, I think the average is now about 1,415%, which is still high.
But if you focus in those zip codes, in those populations, we have diabetes rates up to 20, 30%.
00:08:31:22 – 00:08:32:21
Marcus Goodyear
Wow.
00:08:32:23 – 00:08:54:26
Camille Hall-Ortega
Wow. That is a lot of information but very, very illuminating for sure. And so I know that you’re speaking a little bit to this, but, much of your work, that, that you’ve mentioned previously, you’ve spoken about amputations and what are the disparities you’re seeing specifically with, with amputations and what leads to that disparity?
00:08:54:28 – 00:09:53:01
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
Well, the disparity in amputations is the same that we’ve been talking about. And so the end stage complication of having bad circulation to a foot that produces a wound that may permit infection in the bone, the end stage is an amputation. One of the biggest issues that I’ve, surveyed my patients like, why don’t you show up to your appointments or what is your challenge?
And the number one thing is actually transportation. And number two is actually finances. So even when they’re they have some resources, it’s challenging for them to get to doctor’s offices. But everything else that goes along with that, right? We I tell my patients, I want you to go home and I want you to walk. Walk is great. Exercise isn’t, but I live in a place that doesn’t have the sidewalk or the sidewalks are broken or, you know, it’s kind of dangerous to walk outside.
We have no. And so I it’s hard for me to expect them to do something basic, like walking and exercise to help prevent complications when those are the neighborhoods that they live in.
00:09:53:03 – 00:10:00:27
Camille Hall-Ortega
Oh, the things we take for granted, the things we do. I’m just thinking the things that I take for granted of good, of feeling safe as I take a walk.
00:10:00:27 – 00:10:13:14
Marcus Goodyear
Yeah, yeah. I mean, even just even just a parks down at the end of my street and things like that. Do you think this is something most people realize is it’s something most doctors realize and that just like the word isn’t out.
00:10:13:16 – 00:10:46:22
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
I can tell you that unless you’ve come to the south side of San Antonio and really kind of invested yourself in this community, we they don’t know. And I, I tell my colleagues from the Northside, did you know that we have diabetic amputation rates in some zip codes, or maybe, you know, 15 to 20 times higher than that in other ZIP codes in the Northside?
And they have no idea, which is why I say it’s so important that we need to spread the message and continue talking about it, not just around Diabetes Awareness Month or Art Health Month. This is needs to be a topic, all the time.
00:10:46:24 – 00:10:47:10
Camille Hall-Ortega
Yeah.
00:10:47:12 – 00:10:49:29
Marcus Goodyear
I mean, how do they feel when when you share this with them?
00:10:50:02 – 00:12:46:25
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
Most of them sound surprised. Then they say, what? I’ve lived in San Antonio my whole life. I was born here, I was raised here. I went to college here, I work here. I had no idea that that was happening on the Southside. To this day, right now, as far as access to acute care in San Antonio, meaning a hospital you can go to for a heart attack or pneumonia or a diabetic foot ulcer on the south side of San Antonio, we have only one hospital with only 100 hospital beds for over 700,000 population.
On the Northside, we have over 4000 beds for 1.5 million. And when I tell my colleagues who works, you know, solely on the North side, they’re like, what? Really? I’m so surprised that there’s not more access down there. And so when you really put a number to that statistic, the statistic we follow is how many beds do you have per thousand population currently on the south side we have 0.14 beds.
On the Northside we have 2.94 beds. And so that is just such a very large disparity. And so in May of 2023, there was a Southside hospital called Texas Vista, previously called Southwest General that had shut down. It had maybe 250 to 300 beds, and they had some mental health beds as well. 3 to 4 months after that hospital shut down in my practice alone, I saw a three fold increase in diabetic amputations in people younger than 50.
So, this took and I recognized it right away. It was never like this one thing where that hospital shut down and created a vacuum of acute care. It made it harder for people to go to an emergency room to get to a hospital. And, you know, in my world, we call it we say time is tissue. And if you have a diabetic foot ulcer and it’s infected, the amount to time to get to care is critical.
00:12:46:27 – 00:13:18:13
Camille Hall-Ortega
I’m just I’m just having a lot of personal realizations, right. Just just thinking about what I mentioned in the opening that it’s not perhaps just that my parents moved across town and improved my schooling, but that there is a possibility that they increased my life expectancy by 20 years. Just thinking about that is really rattling me. But not everybody can do that, right?
Like we not everybody can just move. What do you see people doing to try to improve the conditions?
00:13:18:16 – 00:14:20:12
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
I’ve met a lot of people and a lot of organizations and, who are doing a lot of different things in San Antonio. I’ll give you one example that actually had been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Doctor Roberto Trevino. He was a critical care doctor long time ago and realized that diabetes was affecting his community, where he was from in the in the West and Southside of San Antonio.
And he created a program to educate middle school children about nutrition, exercise and understanding. You know, how sugar is processed in the body, he helped, train teachers, gym coaches, people, cafeteria workers, parents. And he actually showed that with this 10 to $15 program, we could prevent childhood diabetes and prevent, and prevent child obesity and diabetes in the long run.
Well, he’s actually wrote a written a book about it, and he’s published in the New England Journal of Medicine that this works like those low cost, widespread interventions.
00:14:20:12 – 00:14:37:27
Camille Hall-Ortega
Work. I’m realizing that we talked a bit about amputations, and I don’t know that we talked about the gravity of that. Can you talk about some of the realities for amputees and what that even looks like, and some of the ripple effects?
00:14:38:00 – 00:16:31:10
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
Well, having the amputation, as you can imagine, is life changing. And, I have to tell you this is why I’m here. One thing I’ve learned about in these communities is that they are resilient. Okay. I’m going to start with they’re resilient. And our goal is to keep them walking or hold to keep them walking with a prosthetic.
But the reality is, once they have an amputation, they’re probably in the hospital for 2 to 3 days, ideally, if they have the insurance plan that allows them to, they get to go to an inpatient rehab where for 2 to 4 weeks they are taught how to transfer, how to keep their other, legs strong, how to use their arms and really try.
Because the reality is you need 1.5 to 2 times more strength to walk with a prosthetic than to walk with two legs. Well, you actually have to build strength and balance that wasn’t there before. Depending on how fast they heal, the staples come out in 4 to 6 weeks. If everything goes smoothly in 4 to 6 weeks, they get referred to the prosthetic company to begin to fit them for a prosthetic.
And that’s a process in itself, because as that stump heals, it first swells, but then begins to come down. And so there’s a lot of changes in the volume of their stump. I do have some patients who, the moment they get their their prosthetic, they’re up and walking. Yeah, I have some that it takes months to find their balance, to get that strength, to get that comfortable, to get the right fit.
And not just the patient themselves, but we don’t see in between there are the support that they need to get them places to keep them in the right mental state, to transport them to all their doctors visits, to keep them doing their physical therapy exercises at home. And that’s where family, friends and the people around that patient really are affected as well.
00:16:31:13 – 00:16:38:11
Marcus Goodyear
Yeah, it’s almost as if the same systems that put them in this situation are going to make it harder to recover.
00:16:38:13 – 00:17:37:15
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
It definitely can be. And so some of my patients have lost a job once they’ve gotten an amputation. I still have some that say my goal is to go back to my job. But that’s still, you know, takes a process. It’s, challenging because we see the amputees in the hospital and most people don’t see them afterwards.
And I am fortunate that I see my patients for their entire lives. I see them till they pass away. I tell people, unlike the primary care of vascular, vascular, all the blood vessels in the body. So, I see my patients until until they die. And unfortunately, some of them go on to lose a second leg. And the reason for that is, like I mentioned, once we get to the point of just a diabetic foot ulcer, their first diabetic foot ulcer, that’s a sign of systemic disease.
And the reality is the one, three and five year survival rates after a patient’s first diabetic foot ulcer is 90% 70%, and at five years, less than 50%.
00:17:37:17 – 00:18:10:20
Camille Hall-Ortega
Wow. I think for me, just such good information, even, you know, obviously at the foundation, we’re exposed to some of this information from our initiatives. But I’m just learning a lot. So just thank you for for all you do. I also want to have us tap a little bit into this notion of the differences in zip codes, and how we know that there are likely some historical roots there we have spoken about in the past.
00:18:10:23 – 00:18:26:08
Camille Hall-Ortega
And in our article where you’re featured in Echoes, we talk about redlining. Can you tell us a little bit about what you found out about the connection between redlining and tell us more about that term, of course, and then what the realities are in the present.
00:18:26:11 – 00:21:17:11
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
I’ll in full transparency. When I first moved to San Antonio, I had no idea what redlining is. My major was chemistry and minor in biology, and then it was medicine my whole life. But when I first moved to San Antonio, it didn’t take long because I did work in hospitals all the way North northeast Baptist, Northeast Methodist, all the way downtown to the Southside.
It didn’t take me long just to see the disparate care, the difference in demographic, the difference in the quality of care. Realizing that I was doing more amputations in certain areas and others. And I at some point I’m like, I’m in private practice. Surgeon. I would not think that this is what I would be seeing. Why am I seeing geographic differences?
And that’s when I met Doctor Christine Drennan. I think we all know she’s a Trinity. She is who taught me about redlining. And so redlining was a practice in the 1930s that during the Great Depression, the federal government wanted to figure out how we help American families rise out of poverty. And they thought, well, if we help families finance the home in the land that they live on, they can build equity.
And with that equity, maybe they can buy a car, they can get a better job on the north side, or they can send their kids to college. And really was kind of the bases of being able to rise out of poverty. What happened at the same time, though, is the federal government went into every large city in the country and delineated certain areas as either attractive to London or hazardous to London.
It is no surprise that if you look at a 1930s, redlined map of downtown San Antonio, it is the Near West, South and east sides. Where are black and brown populations were that were redlined. And it wasn’t not just because of poverty or lack of finances. I mean, if you look at the East side right now, San Antonio, you’ll see those old mansions and realized that there was some real wealth on the East side, and they were still redlined neighborhoods.
And so what was segregationist and racist in the 1930s and was intentional, has created systemic policies and lack of investment in these neighborhoods. The result that we see today. And so I have, presentation where I show a map of a redlined neighborhood, San Antonio. I show a diabetic amputation map of every zip code. It looks exactly the same.
I show a map of the hardship index, which aggregates social issues like educational attainment, poverty, crowding in the household, and compares one zip code to another. How hard it is to live in that zip code. It looked like the same map, and that’s why I believe that we have to use the same energy and intentionality to be able to say, to fight, to reverse that, reverse those practices, we have to focus our strategy.
And that actually I use that map, that map of diabetic amputations to say, where am I going to put my clinics? Is I’m going to put my clinics in the zip codes with the highest diabetic amputation rates. So hopefully I can have a bigger impact.
00:21:17:13 – 00:21:29:11
Marcus Goodyear
So in a sense, you’re investing in these communities that did not receive the historic investments that some other communities might have received, what that were, there were deemed good investments to lenders. Yeah.
00:21:29:13 – 00:22:04:09
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
That’s right. And so I it’s interesting you said yes, I have chosen to invest in this community. I’ve been told by several like, oh, you’re in the wrong area. You’re not going to a place that’s going to make money. Oh, my practice and my, my husband, who is the administrator of my practice. We’ve built the only Medicare accredited surgery center in all of South San Antonio, and that’s because we wanted to create that access for specialty care, like mandatory care.
And so our dream is to create this, surgery center that attracts all those specialists so that we can provide the care here closer to patients in their neighborhoods.
00:22:04:11 – 00:22:14:15
Camille Hall-Ortega
You’re talking a little bit about it already, but I’d love to hear more just about the safe clinic. What led you there? You’ve spoken about that a bit. And and the impact that you’ve seen.
00:22:14:18 – 00:23:28:00
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
The reason I started the safe clinic is really because for the first six years of practice here in San Antonio, I was witnessing that disparate care, preventative human suffering on a daily basis. Yeah. When I sit there and I’m telling families that I need to do an amputation on someone in their 30s and 40s, they’re younger than me.
It just really tears at your soul. Yeah. And I know it needed to be. It needs to be done. But I really couldn’t stop and witness on a daily basis, preventative, chronic illnesses and complications being suffered by communities when I knew it was wrong. I can’t just keep doing the vascular surgery. I really had to figure out how do I use my experience as a vascular surgeon in what I’m witnessing, for advocacy and to change things up front and upfront is way before they come see me.
Up front is when, they’re in elementary school and middle school, when their neighborhoods are being built. Do they have healthy grocery store with healthy fruits and vegetables? Do they have good tree coverage for not only for clean air, but we actually know that the more amount of green environment you have, the less risk of cardiovascular disease you have.
00:23:28:02 – 00:23:28:24
Camille Hall-Ortega
Wow.
00:23:29:02 – 00:23:30:12
Marcus Goodyear
Wow. What’s the connection?
00:23:30:12 – 00:25:28:13
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
It’s one the clean air and is just about being around nature. Also, it has a calming effect, so there’s no doubt that everything you do, any kind of inflammation and stress can lead to more cardiovascular disease. And so it’s when I realized that that happened was I needed to use a safe clinic, one as a model, to figure out how do we address delivering quality care to underserved areas, and how do I show all my medical community that it’s possible that it’s financially viable, that we are fulfilling our mission to take care of our patients and and why we went into medicine, and that we are making meaningful change in these communities.
And I was always told and trained by the surgeons who trained me that that the as a surgeon, you’re that leader in an operating room, but you’re the leader in a community, and it is your responsibility to give back and lead where you see change that needs to happen. And so I thought at first that, by creating save and putting clinics out in the areas that needed that, I would make a change.
And I’m going to be very honest, I haven’t seen this robust change in diabetic amputations. And it’s when I reflected and realize it’s because the 80% of health care outcomes are affected by the social determinants of health and only 20% direct care. So I can do all the surgery I want to do, and I’m not going to have a big impact.
But we really need to address is how we got here in the first place. And we need to figure out how we help our communities be healthy communities without them having to move to the North Side. Yeah. So how do we create communities where there is safe places to, walk and exercise, that there is clean air, that there’s tree coverage, that they can go to their public school and get a quality of education and know they have the opportunities to programing and pathways just like they do on the north side that we create, transportation.
That’s equitable.
00:25:28:15 – 00:26:12:19
Marcus Goodyear
Well, hearing about the importance of community, hearing about all the different things that go into health, from education to the environment to understanding of food to the infrastructure itself of health care. Reminds me of a clip from the Lady Lodge archives. This is, from a fairly recent retreat from 2020. It was actually the last retreat we had, before, the pandemic shut things down.
And it was called Neighboring Together. And this is a clip, in which Michelle Regalia Holland is talking about the idea of beloved community, which is, something she will explain. So we’re going to play this clip, and we just love to to get your your take on it. Tell us, tell us what you think.
00:26:12:21 – 00:26:46:13
Michelle Regalia Holland Clip Audio
I learned about beloved community through the work of Martin Luther King. Some of us are very familiar with, with the quote that my liberation is bound in yours. When I’m not free, you’re not free. When you’re not free, I’m not free. And he recognized that there was an illness, what he described as an inescapable network of mutuality that binds all of us.
And when we do work in isolation, we fail to recognize that we have ripple effects across all of those communities, and therefore, our work should be about transformation so that we can achieve that beloved community.
00:26:46:15 – 00:26:53:16
Marcus Goodyear
When you hear that, what resonates? How does that feel like it applies to the things we’ve been saying?
00:26:53:19 – 00:26:57:22
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
Well, I’m going to start with Michelle Lugo. Leah Holland is a good friend of mine.
00:26:57:25 – 00:26:58:18
Marcus Goodyear
Oh.
00:26:58:21 – 00:27:27:04
Camille Hall-Ortega
How fun.
00:27:37:04 – 00:29:18:19
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
And I, I is we’ve interacted much and she, she speaks to my soul. All right. If only I was as eloquent as she was. But I can tell you the idea that we are all connected and that we all affect each other. I think that’s an important message for all of San Antonio. I have heard some people say ridiculous things like, well, I don’t want to pay for someone else’s health insurance.
It’s not me. It has nothing to do with me. And so the reality is, is that the health of all of San Antonio should matter to all of us. And the reality is that the foundation of San Antonio are those blue collar workers who may be construction workers, who may help clean our hospital beds, who are the cafeteria workers that help feed our children.
They are the ones who showed up during Covid. They had to. They’re the ones who bear a larger burden and a bigger sacrifice to take care of their families. And they affect us all. And so if we don’t have a healthy South San Antonio, East side, then Antonio west side, San Antonio, we’re not going to have a healthy economic development for all of San Antonio.
My message for people are that you should care that our students on the Southside get a good education. You should care that we have access to health care because ultimately, in one way or another, it does affect us. And so go on with that example. I’m not going to pay for someone’s health care, is some comment I heard from somebody, well, someone who doesn’t have health care, you still pay.
Yeah. That patient ends up at the end stages of illness, critically ill in a hospital in the ICU where there’s the most money. And those hospitals do get reimbursed for that care, and that’s our taxpayer money. And now the $15 we could have spent in middle school to prevent this from happening. We are spending tens of thousands for a critically ill patient, that could have been prevented.
And so my messages, we all have to care about each other. We all have to understand that we are all connected. And I do like this, that simple sentence. When I’m not free, you’re not free. Yeah. And when you’re not free, I’m not free.
00:29:18:25 – 00:29:35:15
Camille Hall-Ortega
Oh, my gosh, all is just so important. I am just wondering some takeaways for our listeners at the Foundation. We highlight the importance of being a good neighbor. How can we be better neighbors when it comes to the topic of health access disparities?
00:29:35:17 – 00:30:46:06
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
That’s a good question. You know, I do a lot of, a community talks and I educate, you know, seniors and patients. And one thing I tell them is, you know, when you’re here listening to this information about peripheral arterial disease, you know, this is not just for you, because how many of your friends and families or your neighbors do, you know, have diabetes?
You know, have peripheral arterial disease? I want you to share this message with them and teach them I, I alone am not going to get that message out. And so I think it’s both not only empowering those who are able, but empowering our communities themselves because they can help their own communities by educating their friends, their families with the things that they learn, and connecting them to resources that maybe someone has connected them to.
I always tell people that, look around you and lend a hand. You know, when you can. Sometimes most people will not ask for help, so offer it upfront. Yeah. And if you offer it upfront, I’ll tell you, most people don’t take it. But the ones who need it, well, and so one example of that is every patient that I see, it gets my cell phone number.
And so.
00:30:46:09 – 00:30:47:07
Marcus Goodyear
Wow.
00:30:47:10 – 00:31:18:24
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
I get very few phone calls. And I tell them, no, this is not so you can call me or we can chat in the middle of the night. Yeah. This is for an emergency. And when you you can’t get a hold of, I will always be here for you. And I will answer that phone. I don’t get many phone calls because most of my patients say we don’t want to bother you.
We respect you and your time and we just don’t want to bother you. But there’s there is something in, that security of knowing that if they need help, someone will answer the phone.
00:31:18:27 – 00:31:30:13
Camille Hall-Ortega
Such a good message. So a big takeaway for us is look for need, ask folks what they need and then be there if you can meet the need. I’ll said yeah, yeah.
00:31:30:16 – 00:31:38:29
Marcus Goodyear
So, Camille, I mean that’s what Mary Holdsworth but did right. She would just listen to what the community needed. And then no matter what it was, she would try found.
00:31:39:01 – 00:31:55:29
Camille Hall-Ortega
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lyssa, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for the beautiful work that you do and for sharing with our communities about the needs that that we can really come together and trying to meet. Thank you. Appreciate you.
00:31:56:02 – 00:32:01:10
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
Well, thank you, Marcus and Camille. It’s been a great conversation and I think we need to have more of them.
00:32:01:15 – 00:32:04:17
Marcus Goodyear
Yes yes yes. Absolutely. Sure. Thanks so much.
00:32:04:19 – 00:32:07:23
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa
Thank you.
00:32:07:25 – 00:33:12:24
Camille Hall-Ortega
The Echoes Podcast is written and produced by Marcus Goodyear, Rob Stinnett and me, Camille Hall-Ortega. It’s edited by Rob Stinnett and Kym Stone. Our executive producers are Peyton Dodd and David Rogers. Special thanks to our guest today, Doctor Lisa Ochoa. We recently featured Lisa and Echoes magazine, and you can read the article online at echosmagazine.org. While you’re there, consider subscribing.
You’ll receive a beautiful print magazine each quarter, and it’s free. You can find a link in our show notes. The echoes podcast and Echoes magazine are both productions brought to you by the H. E. Butt Foundation. You can learn more about our vision and mission at hebfdn.org
How do we find true belonging in our communities, and what responsibility do we have to help others do the same?
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