Hilton Head Island in South Carolina is a well known tourist destination. The
resort island's beaches and plush golf greens have made it one of the most
popular vacation retreats in the nation. The idyllic allure of Hilton Head is
so strong that many physicians, dentists, and nurses retire there.
However, the travel brochures don't paint the whole picture. Some 8,000 to
10,000 island residents, roughly one-third of the town's population, are poor
and unable to afford medical insurance. Most of the island's underclass earn
minimum wage salaries working in the service industries that support the luxury
image of the resort community.
Dr. Jack McConnell (Memphis '49) retired to Hilton Head in 1989 after an
outstanding career in medicine. Among other advancements, McConnell was chiefly
responsible for the introduction of Tylenol in its pill forms and for MRI
scanning. Even in retirement, McConnell has been active in research. He is the
founding trustee of the Institute of Genetic Research, whose mission is the
identification of all human genes.
Medical needs that were closer to home, however, became his obsession.
"When I moved to Hilton Head, I was struck by the numbers of working poor in
the community," McConnell says. "I would talk to many of these people around
town, sometimes picking them up when I knew they were hitchhiking to work, and
I would always ask them about the quality of health care they were receiving. I
was alarmed to discover most of them had no access to health care at all. This
seemed fundamentally wrong to me, and I thought I should try to do something
about it."
McConnell embarked on what to many must have seemed a quixotic venture -- to
open a free health clinic staffed entirely by retired physicians from the
Hilton Head community. The more he thought about the project, the more he
believed it would work. There was a sizable group of retired physicians in
Hilton Head eager to do meaningful volunteer work; this much McConnell knew.
But there were serious obstacles. Very few of the retired physicians had
licenses to practice in South Carolina. The procedure for licensing involved
retesting plus a $1,000 fee, which deterred most of the retirees. They were
also worried about the high costs of malpractice insurance and the possibility
of risking their life savings.
McConnell believed he had a solution to those problems. He asked the island's
retired doctors to attend a meeting on the proposed volunteer clinic.
Twenty-nine showed up, many undoubtedly out of curiosity as to how such a
clinic could become a reality.
"My idea was to ask our state legislators for a special exemption from the
state requirements," McConnell says. "I also believed we could get malpractice
insurance for a very low cost for a volunteer clinic staffed by retired
physicians. What I didn't know at the time, when I held that meeting, was that
13 of the 29 physicians who had agreed to join the project talked among
themselves after I had left and decided that it was a good idea but that
nothing would ever come of it."
McConnell agrees that passing the appropriate legislation was a daunting
task.
"I told our state legislators to think of what a positive message they could
carry back to their constituents if we all together, as a community, could
succeed in bringing this about. It would be a success based on the spirit of
volunteerism, not on tax dollars. I impressed upon them that not one penny from
local, state, or federal coffers would be used. They really had nothing to
lose, but a great deal to gain. And it worked."
On July 5, 1994, the doors to McConnell's vision of health care for the needy
opened -- the Volunteers In Medicine Clinic. Funded by corporate and private
donations, the 7,000-square-foot facility contains six examining rooms, dental
offices, an eye clinic, an x-ray room, and a pharmacy. Today the VIM Clinic has
more than 35 doctors and 50 nurses on staff as well as 200 trained lay people,
who donate half a day or more of their time per week. The special volunteers
license allows each medical professional to practice only at the VIM Clinic for
no compensation. The retired physicians are required to be supervised by a
doctor licensed in South Carolina. Each patient chart is double-checked by the
supervising physician.
One of the more curious (and successful) policies of the Volunteers in
Medicine Clinic is referring to all who enter as "friends" and "neighbors"
rather than patients. Dr. Jack McConnell is philosophical about the subject.
"To me, in the setting of our clinic, it would be inappropriate to refer to
our visitors as `patients.' That word has a cold, uncaring ring to it -- it
sounds too much like someone you need to bill for something. More importantly
though, these are indeed our friends. We are neighbors in the Hilton Head
community.
"I have spoken at numerous meetings and suggested we adopt a philosophy of
treating a community of friends and neighbors, not simply diagnosing and
treating medical problems."
The clinic has proved to be not only a health benefit to Hilton Head, but also
a boon to the retirees on the staff. For McConnell says when physicians retire,
many of them "crash."
"People who have dedicated their lives to the health and well-being of others
sooner or later feel they have become second-class citizens, ignored and
unwanted by the medical profession they served and largely forgotten by their
communities. People who have been active in their communities, have worked to
improve the health of their neighbors, find themselves shut out. To a doctor,
there's no worse feeling than being unwanted. No amount of golf can overcome
that.
"I feel strongly that volunteerism is the wave of the future for retired
physicians. They are a priceless commodity waiting to be tapped. The group of
physicians I initially approached about the clinic, the ones who didn't think
we could ever achieve our goal, are nearly all on board our staff now,"
McConnell laughs. "They all wanted to continue practicing in some capacity, but
they didn't want the red tape and bureaucratic hassles."
As of last fall, patient visits to the VIM Clinic nearly matched the
population of working poor of Hilton Head. And how have the patients themselves
responded to the loving care at the clinic? One patient was reported to have
told another, "I can't believe my ears. For the first time in my life someone
called me `Mister.'"
McConnell tells about a patient who had suffered from numerous chronic
complaints including diabetes for many years. "I have found heaven!" she told
her physician. With doctors able to spend as much time as necessary with each
patient, the level of care and caring escalates.
Word of the VIM Clinic's success has brought more than 400 inquiries from
communities throughout the nation that wish to create similar programs. The
clinic has been featured on CBS, ABC, and NBC evening news programs and has
been the subject of articles in Parade, Medical Economics, and
Modern Maturity magazines.
The staff at the VIM Clinic keeps current with new medical techniques and
equipment by being required to take 20 hours of medical courses each year. The
clinic also sponsors weekly lunch-time meetings and seminars for the staff.
"We've been brought up to the present by these lectures every week," Dr. Cliff
Tichenor told Parade magazine. "I feel I can talk with any doctor on the
staff and be his equal in pediatrics."
There was some worry among the staffers about how Hilton Head's practicing
physicians would feel about the clinic and whether they would donate their
services if patients were referred to them. Yet this too has been a success.
The island doctors have been almost entirely supportive of the clinic and its
efforts for the community.
McConnell is proud of the clinic's vision statement, prominently displayed in
each examining room and recited before each staff meeting: "May we have eyes to
see those society has rendered invisible and excluded, open arms and hearts to
reach out and include them, healing hands to touch their lives with love, and
in the process heal ourselves."
McConnell reflects a moment before adding, "I believe I'm the luckiest man to
ever retire. If I had known it would be this good, I would have retired much
earlier!"
Graves is a free lance writer in Cordova, Tennessee. This article originally
appeared in the UT Medicine magazine.
