Frances Horn, D.O., says it was the 3 F’s that pulled her from Oklahoma to Paducah to become a hospitalist at Western Baptist.

“I say I moved here for family, fabric and fishing,” she said. She wanted to be closer to family, she likes to quilt and she enjoys fishing.

She also enjoys taking care of people. She can trace her interest in medicine back to the fifth grade, when she would check the blood pressure for anyone who asked. She became a nurse aide at 15 and a licensed practical nurse by 18.

Later, she earned her Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree from Oklahoma State University and became board-certified in family medicine. “I like to see the whole picture,” she said. “Family medicine is all-encompassing. My passion to help people is the most important thing to bring to the patient.”

She has a particular passion for caring for those with diabetes. “My family is riddled with it, and it is such a treatable disease if you educate the patient.”

In the first six months of her practice in 1999, she treated a woman who suffered necrotizing fascitis, a rare soft-tissue infection and complication of diabetes. “With the help of my consultants, she lived and still walks. I continued to care for her, her daughter, nieces and nephews, until I moved here. That rocks!”

You can sense her enthusiasm in helping people regain their health.

She now does that at Western Baptist as a hospitalist, a hospital-based physician who cares for patients who don’t have a doctor or whose physician isn’t on the hospital medical staff. The hospitalist returns them to the care of their primary care physician when they leave the hospital.

When she’s not working, she’s enjoying quilting in Quilt City USA and finding new fishing holes in Kentucky’s Western Waterland. She also enjoys photography and church activities.

Welcome, Dr. Horn.