We've met some remarkable personalities this year, both in HealthLeaders magazine, and here, online. Some of the most memorable healthcare leaders we've interviewed and written about are not the ones who run complex medical institutions and sprawling health systems. These are the folks who keep finding ways to cut costs, consolidate operations, and raise funds for their institutions.
Meanwhile, they are implementing EHRs, forging ahead with ACOs, and waging war on HAIs. Their work is admirable, to be sure, but it stands separate from doctors who live and practice in places, far from cities, where the pace is slower, and healthcare can be hard to come by.
1. David Nichols, MD, is a primary care doctor who has for the past 31 years, has commuted once a week to Tangier Island, VA, where he has been the island residents' primary healthcare provider. For most of those years Nichols has piloted his own plane or helicopter to make the 15-minute flight. This year, ill with cancer, Nichols attended the opening of a medical clinic he spearheaded—his legacy—on the island. Nichols is profiled in 20 People Who Make Healthcare Better.
2. Trauma expert A. Brent Eastman, MD, chairman of the American College of Surgeons Board of Regents, helped create one of the nation's earliest trauma systems. This year he described to HealthLeaders senior editor Cheryl Clark his vision for a nationwide trauma system. "What I feel—I and others with the same passion for the care of injured patients—is that you could throw a dart at a map of the U.S. and wherever it lands, in 10 years, if you were injured there, you'd be assured that you'd be expeditiously transported to the level of care you needed," he said.
3. Anne Brooks, DO, is a 72-year-old Roman Catholic nun, who despite serious health problems of her own, earned a medical degree. Today she runs a health clinic in rural Mississippi. Many of her patients cannot pay, are "incredibly sick," and wouldn't have a clue what a wellness program is, she says. A tenacious advocate for rural healthcare, Brooks is bridging the gap—remarkably—between rural poverty and health information technology.
4. Surgeon Steven J. Smith, MD, moved to Florida's Upper Keys in the late 1970s for the fishing and boating. But he spends most of his time making house calls and follow-up visits and seeing patients in offices he keeps in two towns. In his neck of the woods, Smith is the doctor most likely to be on call for surgery. Says the administrator at one of the two hospitals he's affiliated with, "He's going to be one of those physicians who will work until he can't do it any longer. I don't see him stopping; there are very few people like him left in the world," she says. "But if, for some reason, he can't continue at this pace or must cut back, it will take two surgeons and an internist to replace him."
5. Unlike most of the others mentioned here, Ryan Flesher, MD, doesn't exclusively treat a vulnerable patient population. But he did achieve something unusual this year, and that's why I'm including him. Flesher was a frustrated emergency department doctor, unhappy with the healthcare system that had him mired in billing codes, malpractice concerns, exhaustion, and not enough time for either himself or his patients. So he went out and made a film. He calls The Vanishing Oath the first "physician-focused" documentary film. Track it down.