Kyle Homertgen, DO
Providing traditional osteopathic manual medicine & lifestyle medicine focused primary care
About Dr Kyle
Dr. Kyle Homertgen holds a Doctorate in Osteopathy from Western University of Health Sciences, College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific, in Pomona, California. He completed his family medicine residency and osteopathic fellowship at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, Maine, in 2010. After practicing family medicine for ten years in the Willamette Valley, he opened Bend Osteopathic Care in August 2020, with a focus on traditional osteopathy, lifestyle medicine, and primary care for patients who are a mutual fit.
Why medicine
As an infant, he was in a family car accident in which the car rolled while his mother held him in her arms — and thankfully did not let go. He grew up with recurrent headaches. After another car accident in high school and a rock-climbing fall as an undergraduate at the University of Colorado Boulder, he struggled with recurrent low back pain. After college, he witnessed his father have a heart attack after returning home from years working in Japan and China. These pivotal events — and the struggles that followed — led him toward medicine.
Finding traditional osteopathy
Motivated by the work of Dean Ornish, M.D., and research on reversing heart disease through lifestyle and whole-food eating, he wanted to bring “food as medicine” to future patients and initially set his sights on conventional allopathic training. He also wanted deeper skills for patients like himself — people with significant mechanical trauma and recurrent pain.
He came across Andrew Weil’s book Spontaneous Healing, which described Dr. Robert Fulford, a traditional osteopath, as one of the greatest healers Weil had worked with. That opened a door: not all D.O.s practice like M.D.s. There is a traditional path of osteopathy you have to seek out — and those physicians are fewer in number. Many D.O.s today do not use their hands and practice across specialties much like M.D.s.
After finding a D.O. who practiced traditional hands-on osteopathy, he received his first osteopathic manual treatment. Unlike the quick thrusting adjustments he knew from childhood chiropractic care, this treatment was very gentle — so gentle it felt almost bizarre. Within a few days he noticed real change: not only less pain, but improved function, strength, and a sense of wholeness.
Training and practice
After finishing two years of pre-medical coursework (following a bachelor’s degree in psychology), he volunteered and then worked as a medical assistant to Viola Frymann, D.O., at the Osteopathic Center for Children in San Diego. The following year he began osteopathic medical school. After nine years of medical school and residency training, he began practice in Albany, Oregon, in 2010.
He spent three years in integrative family medicine with OMT at Samaritan Heartsprings in Albany, then brought that approach to a rural county clinic in Monroe, Oregon. Over seven years at Monroe Health Center — a small clinic between Eugene and Corvallis — the practice became the busiest and highest-rated of five clinics in the county system. Prioritizing holistic care inside a rigid system eventually became too heavy a burden. With both sadness and excitement, he opened his solo practice in Bend in the summer of 2020.
A longer dream
Dr. Kyle still holds a long-standing dream of building a sanctuary of healing — a place where rescued animals can live out their lives, and where people (including those with special needs) can share space with animals and retreat from a busy modern pace. He imagines a restorative, more self-sustaining farm setting where patients can learn practical skills around growing and preparing real food, and reconnect with rest and nature. His passion for reversing chronic disease through lifestyle medicine also led him to found Oregon’s first Vegetable Rx program in 2012, giving underserved patients tokens for the Albany farmers market so they could afford fresh food — nature’s medicine, made accessible.
Jessa (a rescue Weimaraner mix) and Gracie Bell (a rescue from Mexico) often come to the office. They may offer quiet company — and, if they are willing, a bit of attention before or after treatments for patients who enjoy dogs. If you are not a dog person, or have had trauma related to dogs, please let us know and they will not be in the room during your visit.
Mookie and Kersh, his 2 cats, get to stay home.