Family Nurse Practitioner and Prescott Native Offers Her Hometown Community a Holistic Approach to Medicine
By Hilary Dartt • Photo by Trisha Shaffer
Family Nurse Practitioner Louella Bauman started Yavapai Family Medical two years ago so she could practice medicine the way she sees it: as a modality to truly heal her patients.
“I wanted to be able to find the cause of the symptoms so we could actually cure patients instead of just treating them,” she said.
The Prescott native and Prescott High School class of 2000 graduate said during a recent interview that while many patients come in seeking relief from their symptoms, she said, “symptoms are not the illness, they direct you to the cause”.
Louella and her staff take a more natural approach, looking deeper and seeking to treat the deficiency behind the symptom’s cause and cure the root problem. In fact, in addition to her certification as a Family Nurse Practitioner and a Doctorate in Nursing Practice, Louella recently earned her certification as an Acute Practice Holistic Nurse Practitioner (also known as a naturopath).
To aid in holistic healing, they also focus on patient-centered care, cultivating a family atmosphere and a deep sense of connection.
“One of the biggest things we do at Yavapai Family Medical is we listen to our patients; we give them our time. Our patients are more than a number and dollar signs.”
That’s why true connection is a cornerstone of Yavapai Family Medical.
“My employees and I have really worked on making [the practice] more like a family environment. That camaraderie has made it so patients feel more at home. We get to the bottom of things a lot faster because patients are telling us the truth about what they’re doing at home. So, we’re seeing actual, positive changes happen.”
The idea of helping people heal has been on Louella’s heart since she was a child, and her mom was a nurse.
As a student at Miller Valley Elementary School, a teacher assigned her class to write a letter to their high-school-senior selves.
“At five years old I wrote to myself that I wanted to be a nurse, a wife, and a mommy,” Louella said
She went into nursing and spent about 10 years working at Yavapai Regional Medical Center. Then, a school friend who had Type 1 diabetes died of a massive heart attack at age 28 because she was taking the wrong dose of insulin; there wasn’t an endocrinologist in town at that time. This fueled Louella’s passion to go further in education so she could do more.
After earning her Family Nurse Practitioner certification, she spent more than nine years commuting to Black Canyon City before returning to the Prescott area to open her own practice. The goal now was to help people in her own community.
Thanks in large part to its approach, Yavapai Family Medical has grown quickly since it opened its doors in July 2022, reaching almost 4,000 patients this summer and nearly outgrowing its 2,000-square-foot space in Prescott Valley.
Currently, there are three Family Nurse Practitioners on staff. Louella said she’s planning to add two more, and to look for a larger space that’s centrally located. Yavapai Family Medical offers care for infants through geriatric and provides preventative services as well as treating a wide range of illnesses. Patients can also get same-day appointments (Louella said she never wants patients to feel like they have to go to the emergency room or urgent care).
Services include preventative care, mental health, sports physicals, hormone therapy, women’s health, weight control, IV therapy, aesthetics, integrative medicine, and soon, Botox. Yavapai Family Medical works with many health insurance companies.
Although Louella said she’s experienced quite a learning curve with running a medical practice, the entrepreneurial world is nothing new to her; her dad Tim Beal started Beal’s Auto Body and Paint in Prescott when Louella was a baby, and only recently retired.
Louella has three children and loves living within a 30-minute radius of her family. When she isn’t working, Louella enjoys spending time with her family, traveling, watching her son at the racetrack, and being out in the water.
Whenever patients ask if she plans on leaving, her answer is no. She’s exactly where she wants to be, doing what she wants to do: connecting with the people in her community and helping them heal.
Yavapai Family Medical is at 7750 E. Florentine Road, Suite A in Prescott Valley. Learn more at https://www.yavmedical.com or call 928.277.1211.