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| ASSEMBLY EDITION • ORLANDO, FLA |
 Medical student Clay Josephy, left, and Richard Paris, M.D., fly over the Idaho mountains from Hailey to the Challis clinic. |
Richard Paris, M.D., of Hailey, Idaho, was acclaimed AAFP's 2005 Family Physician of the Year during the Congress of Delegates Monday.
"The honor is pretty overwhelming," says Paris, who has spent almost a quarter century treating patients in Wood River Valley, home to Hailey. This award, he says, "means being able to represent what all my colleagues do every day. It's a real recognition."
Paris, a native of North Dakota, graduated from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, N.Y., in 1976. After completing the University of Arizona (Tucson) family practice residency program, he moved to Idaho, where he has been a fixture in the scenic Rocky Mountain community since 1980.
When he arrived, Hailey's health system consisted of an 11-bed hospital and two other doctors. "We were the entire staff," he recalls. "By my second year, I was chief of staff. That happened so many times I lost count."
Today, Paris' practice boasts seven family physicians, including Paris' wife, FP Kathryn Woods, M.D.
Going the distance
In addition to being a primary care physician to Hailey's 4,250 residents, Paris also provides patient care to Challis, a distant mountain outpost 130 miles from Hailey. This requires him to pilot his small plane over the mountains. He and Challis' physician assistant serve a population of about 1,000 scattered over a 100-mile radius.
"Dr. Paris has served as medical director of our rural health clinic since August 1999," says Kate Taylor, administrator for the Challis Area Health Center. "He came when our clinic was in turmoil, financially and professionally. His clinical oversight helped move our facility past that state into a more stable mode of operation."
Paris' medical beat also includes trekking even further into the Rockies to the isolated town of Stanley, where he provides clinical support to the midlevel provider working with the 100 residents.
Reflecting on physician distribution in America, Paris says, "You have a lot of physicians practicing in small towns, but not many have to cover such a large area. You end up having a lot of responsibilities in a community like this."
Many of Paris' patients face distance challenges as they seek out care. "There was a kid in the Pahsimori Valley - about 200 miles away from us - who had an emergency. His family had to drive an hour to get to the clinic in Challis. When they realized they needed to get to a hospital, they had another two-and-a-half-hour drive to be with us," Paris says. "It's amazing how isolated some of these people are."
Pushing progress
As chief of the medical staff for Blaine County Hospital in Hailey, Paris was key in merging two small regional hospitals into one state-of-the-art facility that houses a 24-hour emergency department, inpatient and outpatient surgery, diagnostics, maternity services, and intensive care and surgical units.
"Dr. Paris was instrumental in bringing together a group of excellent family physicians interested in high-quality patient care," says James Blackman, M.D., assistant dean and Idaho clinical coordinator for the University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle. The university houses the medical school for Washington students, as well as students from four other states with no medical schools of their own, through the Washington-Wyoming-Alaska-Montana-Idaho (or WWAMI) program.
"Idaho gets 16 positions each year in the WWAMI program," explains Paris, who served on the medical school's admissions committee to participate in selecting the Idaho students from 1992 to 2001. "A number of years ago, they decided that they wanted more than the academicians in Seattle to decide who goes to school," he says.
On several occasions, Paris participated in interviewing and selecting students who came to Hailey during their first year, came back as third-year students and returned as residents. "Being a part of someone's entire (educational) career is unique," he says.
Paris now teaches in the university's Rural/Underserved Opportunities Program, or RUOP, a four-week program for medical students transitioning between their first and second year, and the WWAMI Rural Integrated Training Experience program, or WRITE, a six-month rural program for third-year students.
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"Hailey was one of several sites in Idaho the first year of RUOP," he says. "And based on our success with RUOP, we were selected to be the first site for the WRITE program in the five-state region in 1997."
Healing the ills, living the life
Over the past 24 years, Paris' patients have come to depend on his healing touch. Says Tom Bowman, a long-time Paris patient, "He has seen me through a leg that was severely broken while skiing, numerous illnesses, a misdiagnosed heart murmur, a few broken ribs and the complicated births of both my little girls. The kids like to go to him and refer to him as 'Doctor Rich.'"
Paris is regarded as an impassioned advocate for the family physician in rural settings. It is a life he's chosen, one that reaches far beyond the exam room. He's also right at home in the great outdoors.
"I get to live in God's country. I get to live with elk in my back yard, go kayaking and still do interesting work," he says. "I have always wanted to be a doctor in a small town in the mountains."
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Copyright © 2003 by American Academy of Family Physicians.