Q. Do you believe there are two Georgias when it comes to health care?

A.
I do. You have the metro area and then you have the remainder of Georgia. It’s not only South Georgia but North Georgia, too. You don’t have the number of paying patients in rural Georgia. You have an aging population. You have a high Medicaid rate. And you have more diseases such as obesity and diabetes and smoking. So there’s a high-risk patient outside of the wealthy zip codes.

Q. Setting aside your lobbying duties, what are you most concerned about as a person who lives in rural Georgia regarding health care?

A. Making sure everybody gets seen by a doctor or specialist whether they can pay or not.

Q. Is that a problem in your community?

A. Not in my community. But if you leave my community and drive anywhere around it within 25 miles, it is a problem. And the problem lies in access to specialists. OB-GYNs, orthopedics, cardiologists. All of those are lacking in South Georgia.

Q. Give me a roundup of what it’s like for doctors practicing in rural Georgia and what it is like for patients.

A. Well, it’s very, very difficult to get a physician to practice in rural areas and it’s very hard to get health care workers, such as nurses, licensed practical nurses and others. It’s very difficult to recruit to rural Georgia.

Q. What bills did you push for this past legislative session? What did you push against?

A. We monitored over 60 bills that impacted health care. We did not push any particular bill. There was a lot of talk around Certificate of Need (CON). We wanted to make sure that if there’s a change in Certificate of Need that it’s done fairly and balanced and is good for the state.
We did have problems with a couple of the [CON bills] that were introduced. We tried to work them out.  In the end, they failed to pass.

Q. Have state lawmakers done enough to help rural Georgia?

A. I think the state has done all it can do. They [lawmakers] have been prepared. They’ve addressed the issue, especially Governor Kemp. When we had COVID, and we were in a crisis, he sent nurses to hospitals. He sent payments to hospitals that were in trouble. He recognized it. And he has funded broadband access, which only helps telehealth. They are helping to the extent they can to keep rural hospital doors open.

Q. You believe strongly in the need for the Certificate of Need program, which has been very controversial. Explain why you feel it’s important.

A. It has quality control rules and regulations. It protects a rural hospital from an ambulatory surgery center coming in and building next to it and drawing the paying patient out of the hospital into that ambulatory environment. That just kills a rural hospital.

Q. Are many of the doctors in rural areas contract doctors?

A. Some of them are. You might have a Phoebe Putney regional hospital that contracts with a physician in a rural county as part of their network of physicians.

Q. What is the makeup of the doctors? Are many of them coming from overseas?

A. Yeah, you have that in cases but most of it is your average American practicing physicians who are doing primary care. It’s most difficult to get a specialist to a rural area.

Q. You’ve seen a lot of change in rural Georgia regarding health care. In your estimation, is it getting better or worse?

A. I hate to say it but I don’t see a lot of improvement because of the rapid growth in the aging population and disabled. I think telehealth has a promising future but it’s not totally there yet. Governor Kemp has done a good job in funding it. I think once everything is up online with broadband, we can expand the number of diagnostic [procedures]. We have to get the federal government to reimburse physicians and providers for providing their service, and insurance companies. We’ve got a ways to go but we’re making progress.