Mother and daughter launch direct primary care clinic after graduating from ETSU together

BOONES CREEK, Tenn. (WCYB) — A mother and daughter who earned their nurse practitioner degrees together are now opening a new direct primary care clinic in Boones Creek and Monday was their opening day.

News Five’s Natalea Hillen spoke with the duo about their journey from the classroom to caring for patients side by side.

Eva Jessee and her daughter, Kali Holt, graduated from ETSU together and are now taking their shared passion for patient care to the next level, opening Twisted Roots Healthcare in Boones Creek.

It’s always wonderful to get to work with my mom. We both have really really good strengths and really offset each other’s weaknesses. So in the areas that I am a little bit sturdier she helps. I help her in the areas that she’s a bit sturdier and I think that’s been something that’s always been a strength of ours is just how well we kind of playoff one another, said COO and Co Founder, Kali Holt.

The mother-daughter team said the idea first sparked for Eva in August of 2025.

We were finishing some rotations at some local clinics and we started noticing that in probably the fall the government subsidies were were still up in the air and people didn’t know what they were gonna be doing as far as insurance and healthcare, and a lot of our patients began to complain and come to us with concerns that they were gonna be losing their health insurance. So we really prayed about it and tried to figure out what could we do to answer that crisis and that’s where Twisted Roots Healthcare came to be, said CEO and Founder, Eva Jessee.

They said direct primary care allows them to spend more time with each patient.

You are rushed through like cattle and when you feel like you’ve only got a certain amount of time, I don’t feel like you feel very seen and heard and so I saw that just because you have to make quotas and you have to make deadlines and you have to make so many productivity standards because medicine is still a business and I felt like walking day by day and medicine with people in a way that we could slow down and we could take our time with something that would benefit the people of our region, said Kail.

And without the pressure of insurance-driven visits.

With so many people losing health insurance, one of the things that they complained about was the high cost of their premiums, so versus pay those high premiums, they just drop their health insurance. What we do as a direct patient care is we can provide primary care services just like you could go anywhere else to see a doctor for one low monthly fee. So depending it’s based on age your age range, but you pay one for a month you get 24/7 access to a provider either Kali or myself where we’re literally on call on weekends, so that hopefully mitigate the need for patients to go to the ER or urgent care. If you don’t want to sign it for a monthly membership then you can just do urgent care I think our fees at urgent care Start it may be like $50 per event so it’s just a whole lot cheaper, plus when you come here we also have discount rates on our medication‘s here, they are gonna cost you about a 1/4 to 1/5 cheaper than what you can get them at at most of your local chain pharmacies and our diagnostics. We have special pricing with LabCorp quest and different places in the area so their pennies on the dollar compared to what you’re gonna pay somewhere else, said Eva.

Every Friday, they host a free clinic day, opening their doors to those who may not have access to care.

We’re gonna give 12 hours of our day away to our patients. They need to call the clinic to make an appointment, but with that our goal, our hope is to give our time in our services away, but also to give away medication‘s that some of the patients may need and to give labs away that day, said Eva.

This year, they hope to expand even further with plans to launch a mobile clinic.

For me, it’s surreal. I feel incredibly honored, but also a sense of responsibility. We want to do the right thing at the right time. We want to be an asset to this community, Eva said.

Twisted Roots Healthcare is open Monday through Thursday from 8am to 5pm, with Friday serving as free clinic day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.