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Dr. Lia Shorter (left) talks with nursing student Lorraine Hegi. Shorter recently moved her practice to Stafford.
Dr. Kurian Thott hands some paperwork to office manager Maria Teague in his Stafford office. Thott and his partner Dr. Lia Shorter are among the doctors lured here in part because of the new Stafford Hospital Center.
Dr. Lia Shorter (left) and Dr. Kurian Thott (right) are among a number of doctors attracted to Stafford County by the opening of Stafford Hospital Center. Thott and Shorter worked together in Reading, Pa., before coming to this area. |
BY JIM HALL
During the four years that Dr. Kurian Thott was in residency in Reading, Pa., the city grew by 170 people.
Stafford County, he discovered, was growing by that much each month. In addition, Stafford was an hour from Washington, with an educated population and a new hospital in the works.
"I would love to start a practice here," he concluded.
Thott moved to Stafford last fall to found the Women's Health and Surgery Center, an obstetrics/gynecology practice, on U.S. 1.
Dr. Lia Shorter, who trained with Thott in Reading and was already working in Fredericksburg, moved her practice to Stafford to join him.
Thott and Shorter are among two dozen doctors who have started or expanded their practices in Stafford in recent months.
They were drawn, at least in part, by the new Stafford Hospital Center.
The opening of the 100-bed hospital five months ago and the arrival of the new doctors signal a change for Stafford residents, who have mostly gone to Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg or Potomac Hospital in Woodbridge for their care. Now they have options closer to home.
The changes also offer a preview of what could happen in Spotsylvania County, when the new Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center opens there next year.
"Prior to Stafford Hospital, you could almost draw a line," said Dr. Kenneth Josovitz, a gastroenterologist. "Some patients would go to Mary Washington, and some would go to Potomac. With the new hospital you solidify the community and strengthen the base."
Josovitz has practiced in North Stafford for 13 years, but the main offices for his Associates in Gastroenterology practice are in Woodbridge and Manassas. When his Stafford patients needed surgery, he usually did the operations at Potomac.
Now Josovitz can operate on his Stafford patients at Stafford Hospital Center.
"On April 1, when they said 'go,' I had a full day," he said.
Other doctors tell similar stories of being drawn by the new hospital and the prospect of building their practices in a growing but under-served area.
"This really is a community now," said Dr. Arthur Vayer. "We needed this sort of facility."
Vayer, a general surgeon, has worked out of an office in North Stafford for eight years. But like Josovitz, he was based in Prince William County and took his Stafford patients there for their surgeries. Now he does many of his operations at Stafford Hospital.
"We're trying to grow our practice here," Vayer said.
The doctors in two other general surgery practices and one cardiology practice also have joined the medical staff at Stafford Hospital. All had offices in Stafford, sometimes for years, but directed their patients north when the patients needed hospitalization.
In addition, Stafford Hospital has the region's first obstetric hospitalist service, which specializes in the emergency care of obstetrics and gynecology patients.
The hospital hired OB Hospitalists Group, a South Carolina company, to provide the in-hospital service.
Dr. Christopher Swain, the founder, said that six physicians from the practice are stationed at Stafford Hospital and take turns providing 24-hour care to pregnant women and those with gynecological problems. The doctors in the practice have delivered about half of Stafford Hospital's babies, Swain said.
The OB hospitalists are among 23 doctors on the medical staff at Stafford Hospital who are new to MediCorp Health System, said Dr. Allen Aaronson, senior medical director at Stafford Hospital.
MediCorp is the parent company of both Stafford and Mary Washington hospitals.
"The key piece here is these people bring new patients," Aaronson said. "These groups are bringing patients who have never been seen by MediCorp before."
One of those new doctors is Thott, who learned from his years in Reading, Pa., that if a region's population growth is stagnant, its medical practice--outside a teaching hospital--could be stagnant as well.
"There you had these community docs who did it the way they did it 25 years ago, and they still did it the same way," he said.
Stafford Hospital, he added, was different. It offered opportunities and a chance to help mold the way medicine would be practiced there.
Dr. Carolina Hernandez looked at Stafford and saw some of the same opportunities: a growing area and a new hospital.
"I saw also that there were not many primary-cares in this area, so I said, 'Fantastic,'" she said.
Hernandez worked in North Carolina before moving to Stafford last summer. Her internal-medicine practice is on U.S. 1 north of the new hospital.
"It's definitely so much better to have a hospital within reach," she said.
Dr. Michelle Campbell, a family-practice doctor, moved to Stafford in November after working in Martinsville for four years.
Campbell said she was discouraged about Martinsville, where factories have closed and the unemployment rate is 21 percent, the state's highest.
"When I looked toward my future, I knew there would be a problem," she said. "If people lost their jobs, they would also lose their insurance coverage. They wouldn't be able to fund their medical care. That was one of the big reasons why I looked into moving."
Campbell worked with a recruiter who helped her find Stafford. She saw the new hospital under construction and that "tons of people are moving in every month."
She concluded, "This would be a place that I could grow a practice."
She, too, opened a new office on U.S. 1 north of the hospital.
"It's a lot to move a practice and a life," she said. "But this a wonderful area to be in. It's kind of a small town, but has a lot to offer."
Jim Hall: 540/374-5433
Email: jhall@freelancestar.com
Stafford Hospital Center from Feb. 27 through 10,998 Emergency Room visits 67 Births 953 Admissions 25,273 Outpatient lab tests 8,892 Outpatient radiology procedures |
