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HL20: Larry Rhodes, MD—Passion for Healthcare in the Mountain State

By Ryan Chiavetta  
   January 22, 2014

Trained in gritty urban centers, Larry Rhodes, MD, is working to expand pediatric care and bolster telemedicine programs in his home state through his leadership role at West Virginia University's School of Medicine and his volunteer activities.

This profile was published in the December, 2013 issue of HealthLeaders magazine.

 

Larry Rhodes, MD, has worked for some of the most famous hospitals in the country based in the urban centers of Boston and Philadelphia.

While he enjoyed his time in the big cities, his heart always belonged to his home state of West Virginia, which has fewer than 1.9 million residents.

The love and passion for the Mountain State is what motivates Rhodes in his numerous endeavors to help create the best possible healthcare system for his patients.

Rhodes does most of his work through West Virginia University, serving as the director of community and rural health, and was named permanent chair for the WVU School of Medicine's Department of Pediatrics in June, after serving as interim chair for 15 months.

He says "I'm very excited about it because it's an opportunity to do more of what I want to do," says Rhodes. "You have a bigger bully pulpit as a chair in doing things for patients and different community-based activities for families and patients."

The doctor's top objective is to expand a program that he is already involved with, increasing it to a much larger scale: outreach clinics around the state for children who have congenital heart disease. Operating out of Morgantown—a city of 31,000 near the state's northern border with Pennsylvania—Rhodes works in the only center in West Virginia that performs surgery on children with congenital heart disease. Because long trips along rural roads make it difficult for residents to arrange visits for checkups, Rhodes heads out himself to make it easier for his patients.

He wants to promote and expand the outreach clinics, and emphasize the value that the clinics possess for the people of West Virginia.

"It's a great relief for families," says Rhodes. "It may cost a family $50 in gasoline to come 150 miles to see a specialist, and then 150 miles home—things like that we sometimes lose sight of when we are in an academic institution."

One tool that Rhodes says will help with a number of issues is another program that he's advocating as the new department chair: He is trying to shore up the state's telemedicine program. He has been talking to subspecialists about using telemedicine to check in on patients and believes that the technology will benefit both patients and doctors.

"The ultimate goal is that if a person 75 miles from here has a patient they would just like to run by a specialist, they would have that ability to call up and say, 'Could you see this patient two hours from now via telemedicine?' " he says.

The ability for referring physicians and consulting physicians to communicate via telemedicine helps to nullify the problem of the long distances, and with pediatric cardiologists being a rarity in West Virginia, it is a good tool for adult cardiologists who lack experience with children patients.

Rhodes notes that the technology is cheaper and easier to use than ever before, with the entire setup needing only a computer and a webcam. He estimates that at least 15 centers associated with the university use telemedicine in West Virginia, and his goal is to organize and strengthen the program all over the state.

Telemedicine might help with referrals, but Rhodes also hopes that the technology can be used as a recruiting tool to attract doctors to rural areas. As director of community and rural health for WVU, Rhodes helps medical students complete their training by taking them to underserved areas to let them practice medicine in a rustic setting. "We believe that by giving the students exposure to rural communities and the benefits of being a healthcare provider in some of these smaller towns, that it might encourage them to pursue a career where they work in smaller communities and different rural areas of the state," says Rhodes.

Recruiting rural physicians hasn't been easy, and while Rhodes says the program has helped keep some physicians in the area, there is still room to improve retention of medical school graduates.

Rhodes notes that there are various problems that keep med students from staying in rural communities. Limited earning potential, especially for primary care physicians is one issue. A program is in place to offer $25,000 scholarship for med students if they agree to commit to a rural area for one year, but the fruits of those efforts have not been seen yet.

Telemedicine comes into play by combating feelings of isolation that physicians might experience in rural areas. While parts of West Virginia are sparsely populated, telemedicine allows physicians to maintain contact with other doctors and allow them to bounce ideas off of other professionals.

Rhodes says he loves West Virginia and all of the patients he gets to treat. He enjoys receiving hunting pictures from patients and talking to them about the farm animals they own.

It's why he helped cofound Bob Hartley's Camp Mountain Heart, a summer camp for children with congenital heart disease that finished its 18th run this summer. The camp is a place for children, many of whom have had heart surgery, to be a part of a community where they don't feel uncomfortable about having scars running down their chest or under their armpit.

"There is some type of magic that happens at this camp where these kids take care of each other," says Rhodes. "They have an unspoken bond that they know what they need. It's a pretty remarkable thing."

Camp Mountain Heart has no affiliation with WVU and Rhodes doesn't get paid for volunteering. He does it because he loves his patients and he loves his work. He'll make the extra effort for them, whether it's driving five hours to an outreach clinic or cancelling a vacation to handle an appointment.

Rhodes is at home at West Virginia, and he knows it's the place that needs him the most.
"When I left Philadelphia, I think I was one of 40 pediatric cardiologists in that one children's hospital," he says. "Here, there are nine in the entire state so I feel like I'm doing more of what I was trained to do. I take care of more patients and I just feel like I'm doing more of what my calling was."

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