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Dr. Hoyer\u2019s team, based in Colorado Springs, splits time at Lamar\u2019s Prowers Medical Center and Trinidad\u2019s St. Rafael Hospital. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\nLAMAR<\/p>\n
Dr. Robert Hoyer doesn\u2019t bother buying groceries or using the kitchenette in the little room at the Holiday Inn Express where he lives for four days every month. By the time he and his staff finish 12-hour days at the clinic, they usually head for enchiladas at La Mission Villanueva or steaks at Tavern 1301.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve settled into a routine by now in this small town on the southeastern Colorado plains, where they travel once a month to see patients with cancer who otherwise would have to drive two hours to Pueblo or three hours to Colorado Springs for doctor appointments.<\/p>\n
Medical assistant Creston Potts\u2019 mom takes care of her cat, Purdy, while she\u2019s taking care of patients on the road, away from her regular job at UCHealth Memorial Central in Colorado Springs. She\u2019s been working with Hoyer for 10 years now.<\/p>\n
Nurse practitioner Rose Gates, who retired and then returned for this, is exhausted by the end of the week but knows she would feel \u201crestless\u201d if she hadn\u2019t. She walked through the Lamar clinic while eating a baked potato from the Prowers Medical Center cafeteria because she doesn\u2019t have time to sit down.<\/p>\n
And Hoyer, known as the \u201coutreach oncologist,\u201d listens to audio books or logs into virtual meetings as he treks 400 miles each month on highways and two-lane roads across rural Colorado. After a long day at the Lamar clinic last month, he was watching his college daughter\u2019s concert on a livestream, since he couldn\u2019t go in person to the performance in Boulder.<\/p>\n
On their travel week, the UCHealth team leaves Colorado Springs about dawn on Mondays, driving two hours straight south to Las Animas County, where they visit patients in borrowed space at Mt. San Rafael Hospital in Trinidad. On Tuesday mornings, they drive northeast to Lamar, where they use an empty suite of rooms at Prowers Medical Center. They head home to Colorado Springs around noon on Fridays.<\/p>\n
In five days, Hoyer\u2019s team sees about 130 patients, some to explain their diagnosis for the first time, and others to discuss test results or the next round of chemotherapy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There is not a single oncologist based in the southeastern quadrant of the state.<\/p>\n
The hospitals in Prowers and Las Animas counties are community-owned and not part of UCHealth\u2019s 14-hospital system. The rural medical centers partner with UCHealth because, otherwise, residents in their region might either forgo treatment or have to drive hundreds of miles for care.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Specialists of any kind, including cardiologists, pulmonologists and endocrinologists, are nonexistent in many counties on the Eastern Plains. Even family physicians are few and far between. In the 17 counties of the Eastern Plains, there is one physician for every 995 residents, compared with one per 295 residents in urban Colorado, according to the Colorado Rural Health Center.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dr. Hoyer\u2019s team, based in Colorado Springs, splits time at Lamar\u2019s Prowers Medical Center and Trinidad\u2019s St. Rafael Hospital. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n
Hoyer has been traveling to southeastern Colorado since 2011, when he took over for a doctor who was retiring. He attended medical school at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., worked at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and became the medical director of oncology at Memorial in Colorado Springs. He had no experience in rural health care until he was \u201cvoluntold\u201d to report to his first day on the job in Lamar.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really opened my eyes to the situation,\u201d he said, sitting at one of the desks crammed into an old exam room that is now his team\u2019s office space. \u201cI was shocked at how access was so challenging for patients, and how few doctors there are. Coordination of care was very spotty.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The traveling clinic began as just one day per month and slowly expanded to a full week as word spread about the traveling oncologist, and as the number of patients with cancer has grown.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe travel element initially was not something that I greatly enjoyed, but recognizing the impact this clinic has had for the patients in rural Colorado, I am happy to do this, and I would do it daily if I had to because it\u2019s such a critical element,\u201d he said. \u201cThe lack of specialty providers in this area is really striking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patients are coming not just from Lamar, population 7,700, but smaller towns in the region, including Springfield, Walsh, Eads, Holly and Cheyenne Wells. Some of Hoyer\u2019s patients drive an hour just to see him in Lamar.<\/p>\n
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Michelle Cooper, who lives in Springfield and uses UC Health\u2019s traveling oncology clinic at Prowers Medical Center in Lamar, has her blood pressure checked by medical assistant Creston Potts. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n
Diagnosed on a Tuesday\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Michelle Cooper comes from her home in Springfield, about 45 minutes south of Lamar in Baca County. Her best friend of 25 years, Glenice Wade, drove her to a recent appointment, where Cooper learned her cancer had spread. Both women had tears in their eyes even before Hoyer walked into the exam room, a mostly bare space equipped with a leather patient chair that looks like it spent decades in a dentist\u2019s office.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cooper, 54 and the mother of a teenage girl, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer two years ago. It was a Tuesday, she remembers, because the details of that day have not faded.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By the following week, Cooper was already at her first appointment with Hoyer, who arranged for her to start chemotherapy at the hospital in Lamar. The director of the small infusion center, which is a cozy, living room-like space with a few leather recliners, is a woman Cooper knew from high school.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In two years of infusions, Cooper has not had to drive to Colorado Springs. She has talked to Hoyer in person, via telehealth and when he has called her at home, even on a Sunday, to see how she was feeling. Getting her care in Lamar has meant that she\u2019s been around to watch her daughter compete in basketball, volleyball and track, instead of driving to Colorado Springs for regular infusion appointments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy first eight rounds of chemo were seven-and-a-half, eight hours long, so if I would have had to drive four hours, do eight hours of chemo, go four hours home, I mean, if you could make it home, right?\u201d she said. \u201cBecause sometimes, just from here to Springfield, it was a little iffy. You\u2019re just so tired. So tired.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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These outreach programs are lifesaving. They are essential to rural areas.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Michelle Cooper<\/p>\n
Cooper\u2019s husband and her best friend have taken turns driving her to Lamar and running errands while she gets her infusions, which decreased from eight hours, to four hours, to about one hour. They\u2019ve continued every three weeks for almost the entire two years, minus four months when she had a break.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I was able to come here, I had the energy to chase my daughter with all the ballgames, track meets, all that stuff,\u201d she said. \u201cI mean, I can\u2019t even imagine how many lives it\u2019s saved.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some patients would not get treatment at all if driving to Pueblo or Colorado Springs was the only option, said Cooper, who works as a registration clerk at a family medicine clinic in Springfield, called Southeast Colorado Medical.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of them can\u2019t afford it,\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of them aren\u2019t as lucky as me, and have people who can take off work to do this. Most of the people that I know that do travel, they have to stay the night. They\u2019re away from their kids, and they miss them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part of her job at the Springfield clinic is helping patients get appointments with specialists, so Cooper knows how hard it is to find care in southeastern Colorado. When a family doctor in La Junta died a few years ago, people started driving two hours to Springfield, she said. As for getting an appointment with a visiting cardiologist, orthopedist or nephrologist, expect to wait six months, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese outreach programs are lifesaving,\u201d she said. \u201cThey are essential to rural areas.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In addition to the oncology team, UCHealth has five cardiologists who hold clinics in southern Colorado, including in Lamar, Springfield, Eads, La Junta, Walsenburg, Trinidad and Ca\u00f1on City. Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers sends oncologists to Burlington and La Junta.<\/p>\n
There are about 90 oncologists in Colorado with active licenses, according to data from the Colorado Medical Society and the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies. Nearly all of them are along the Interstate 25 corridor, with a few scattered on the western side of the state, including in Durango and Grand Junction.<\/p>\n
For Cooper, it\u2019s been a comfort to talk through the scariest diagnosis of her life close to home, in a place where she doesn\u2019t need directions or have to navigate a giant parking garage, with a doctor who is connected to a renowned hospital system and the latest research.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is kind, and straight at the same time,\u201d she said. \u201cHe just wants you to feel the best that you can possibly feel while you\u2019re going through whatever you\u2019re going through.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Dennis Leathers schedules an appointment with receptionist Angela Dunwody at the Prowers Medical Center\u2019s cancer clinic. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout this treatment, I don\u2019t have any hope\u201d<\/p>\n
Dennis Leathers, 77, has been getting a shot of chemo in his stomach once a month in Lamar since his diagnosis a year and a half ago. He and his wife, Kathy, drive about 30 miles from Holly to see Hoyer about his treatment for multiple myeloma, a rare type of blood cancer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a lifesaver,\u201d said Leathers, who learned about the traveling doctor in Lamar from a friend in Holly.<\/p>\n
Leathers and his wife did have to to travel to Colorado Springs for a 7 a.m. vascular surgery. They spent money on a hotel room the night before, plus meals \u2014 expenses not covered by insurance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The monthly injections don\u2019t make him feel much worse than a flu shot would, he said, but he\u2019s still glad he has a short drive home afterward. Kathy Leathers has a friend who had to pack a portable toilet when she drove her mother to chemo treatments in Colorado Springs because the treatments made her mother so sick to her stomach.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe had to drive four hours to take her mother for her treatments, and they had to stop several times on the way,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The couple has such a trusted relationship with Hoyer at this point that they get choked up thinking about the day he will stop coming to Lamar. \u201cHe is beyond reproach,\u201d Kathy said. \u201cHe is kind and compassionate and he listens. If you need to talk to him for an hour, he will.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dennis Leathers likely must continue his monthly shots for the rest of his life. \u201cWithout this treatment, I don\u2019t have any hope,\u201d he said. \u201cSo what do we do?\u201d<\/p>\n
One family nurse practitioner, 1,900 patients<\/p>\n
Shelby Casper, a family nurse practitioner, opened her practice in Wiley in 2022 when she decided to move back home to the Eastern Plains after years studying and practicing medicine in Pueblo and Denver.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She has 1,900 patients. To see them all, Casper works 10-hour days Monday-Thursday, then spends Friday on administrative tasks, including paying the clinic\u2019s bills and her staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is such a lack of care and it\u2019s hard to turn people away,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m maxed out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Casper said she has been trying for months to hire another medical provider for her office in Wiley, a tiny town northwest of Lamar with a population of about 430. She\u2019s hoping for a nurse practitioner but she will take what she can get.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are constantly looking for providers,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s very challenging to get people to understand this way of life and come to this little rural part of Colorado. They tend to come to this area and there is just not a lot to do. We surround a lot of our fun around our family. We create our own fun. They are used to urban life and shopping at their fingertips.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her patients are complex, often with multiple risky conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, obesity and pulmonary disease. And because of the lack of specialists, Casper helps them manage all of those illnesses.\u00a0There is no doctor at her clinic.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf people have to travel out of town and can\u2019t afford to do so, they just don\u2019t,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Casper is grateful she can at least refer patients with cancer to the clinic in Lamar. \u201cObviously that\u2019s a relief when they are facing such a challenging and scary diagnosis,\u201d she said. \u201cThey can stay close to home.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Entrance](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Colo_Sun_Oncology_Clinic_01-1200x734.jpg\")
The Prowers Medical Center in Lamar hosts UC Health\u2019s traveling oncology clinic, where the team from Colorado Springs meets patients in rural areas closer to home. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n
Chemo mixed under complex safety protocols, driven to Trinidad<\/p>\n
Smaller, rural hospitals don\u2019t often have an infusion center in part because of the complex process of mixing chemotherapy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In Lamar, the Prowers Medical Center has a specialized pharmacy with the required ventilation and safety protocols for hazardous materials, so it can mix chemotherapy for Hoyer\u2019s patients. For Trinidad, however, the chemotherapy is mixed in Colorado Springs and driven to the Mt. San Rafael Hospital, a 25-bed hospital owned by the nonprofit Trinidad Area Health Association. The timing of the transport is imperative, since patients must receive the chemo within hours of its production.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Behind the scenes, what patients don\u2019t see is that Hoyer and his team are creating chemotherapy plans for their patients with the help of UCHealth\u2019s electronic medical records system. Each patient\u2019s dosage is tailored to them, and it depends on what other medications they are taking, their liver and kidney function, allergic reactions and a host of other information, said Dr. Wells Messersmith, chief medical officer for oncology services at UCHealth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
This story first appeared in Colorado Sunday, a premium magazine newsletter for members. Experience the best in Colorado news at a slower pace, with thoughtful articles, unique adventures and a reading list that\u2019s perfect for Sunday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not like someone is just writing their prescription,\u201d he said. \u201cThese are very, very complex calculations that have to happen.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hoyer writes infusion orders in his laptop in Lamar and Trinidad, and those orders are subject to drug interaction checks, organ function checks and other safety checks that are built into the system, all vetted by committees of highly specialized physicians, Messersmith said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The system of safety checks means that patients in rural areas are getting the same quality of care as those visiting much larger urban hospitals, he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think about the burden of cancer in terms of someone\u2019s lifespan and whatever symptoms they may have, the burden of finances and time is something that we often don\u2019t take into account,\u201d Messersmith said. \u201cFor a patient to be able to continue to work and to be involved in the lives of their family members and their community, it\u2019s difficult to calculate that. Many patients tell us that it\u2019s incalculable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Rose Gates came out of retirement after a career as a nurse practitioner to work with UC Health\u2019s traveling oncology clinic, serving patients in southeastern Colorado. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n