Get to Know Laura F. Snider, DNP

Board Director
INhouse Primary Care

Laura Snider, DNP, is the CEO and founder of INhouse Primary Care, a home-based primary-care private practice covering central Indiana. She founded her practice in 2007 after having worked as a family nurse practitioner (FNP) in a traditional practice. Snider leads a team of NPs and support staff and continues to have her own patient census. In 2018, she was elected to the board of AAHCM and also has been a board member of the Central Indiana Council of Aging Medical Advisory Council since 2016. Since 2019, Snider has been working with CMS as a QPP Clinician Champion.

Snider was born in Kansas City, KS, and grew up outside of Indianapolis, IN. She received her nursing degree from University of Indianapolis in 1985, obtained her FNP degree from Indiana University in 1997, and became a doctor of nursing practice in 2010 after graduating from Rush University in Chicago, IL. Laura has been adjunct faculty in the FNP program at Indiana University for 17 years. She is married and has two daughters and two grandsons.

What attracted you to the field of home care medicine?

I had been working in family practice as an NP and teaching in the graduate program at IU when I was introduced to a house call practice in Louisville during a site visit with one of my students. At the same time, my father was dying from lung cancer. In the couple months prior to his death, he had issues that we couldn’t get addressed because he couldn’t leave home. At his last hospitalization, he was moved into hospice and released to home, actually passing away at home the next day, just prior to the hospice admission. I was pretty frustrated with the lack of care and couldn’t imagine how things would have gone if I wasn’t available to him.

Shortly after this, with ten years in a traditional practice, I began looking for another option/challenge and considered opening my own practice. But as an NP, I needed it to be a unique option, different from a physician-based practice. Starting a house call practice just followed naturally. In 2007, I opened INhouse Primary Care in central Indiana. At the time, there were few practices doing house calls and no NP-owned practices doing house calls.

How has working in this field impacted your practice? What keeps you in the field?

Providing primary care to patients in their home is one of the most rewarding and challenging things I have ever done. Opening a business along with practicing in a new environment and as an NP was a bit more intense than I expected, with unexpected barriers. But, with every visit to a patient that cried when they were told we would fight to keep them home, every caregiver that thanked us, and with every challenge and barrier overcome, it made the fight so worthwhile.

Why AAHCM? What drives your involvement?

Opening a practice forced me to complete a business plan – looking for resources and barriers as part of that led me to AAHCM. The Academy was an invaluable resource in every aspect of opening the business of a house call practice, invaluable mentorship and support, providing standards of care to strive for and practical answers to issues of providing care in the home.

We are now in our eleventh year with a steadily growing practice and I would like to support and assist the academy, especially with issues related to APRNs, and mentor any provider starting in home based primary care.

How did you start? What advice can you offer to a person considering volunteering with AAHCM?

After finding the AAHCM website and ordering the “Field Guide to Developing Successful Practices and Programs”, I literally picked up the phone and called the offices when I had any question or issue. I also attended the annual meetings. Operating as a sole provider in a house call practice can be isolating, but it was so informative and energizing to be with a group that completely gets what we do every day and are facing the same issues.

My advice would be to go to the annual meeting to see all the work the academy has done and is doing to continue to advance home care medicine and volunteer to help with the group that is dealing with the issues most affecting your practice.

To learn more about getting involved with the AAHCM, please email us at [email protected].