Annual program honors champions of Chattanooga health care

Aug. 14--Chattanooga is home to the world's biggest disability insurer, Tennessee's largest health insurer and three major hospital systems that collectively employ thousands of nurses, physicians and other health care providers. But health care is far more than just one of the city's biggest industries. For many people, it is a matter of life and death.

To recognize outstanding contributors to health care in our community, the Chattanooga Times Free Press and Edge magazine, in partnership with the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Medical Society and presented by BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, are honoring the Chattanooga Champions of Health Care.

The annual honors program is designed to recognize excellence, promote innovation and educate the community about best practices to enhance the quality of health care in the Chattanooga area.

More than 130 people and organizations were nominated for recognition this year. From among those nominees submitted by their peers, a panel of the three local hospital presidents and the head of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Medical Society selected this year's winners in seven categories. Each of this year's Champions of Health Care have devoted a lifetime of work, both paid and volunteer, to improve the health of our community in a variety of ways.

The honorees will be profiled in the September issue of Edge Magazine and recognized at an awards luncheon on Sept. 21 at The Chattanoogan Hotel.

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Lifetime Achievement Award honors health care leaders who have left a legacy on the quality and delivery of health care.

Dr. Jackson Yium and Dr. Michael Carr

When Erlanger Health System brought Dr. Jackson Yium here in 1973, he was the only nephrologist in the Chattanoogs area. Yium pioneered the treatment of kidney disease and disorders in the Chattanooga area. He was appointed the director of Erlanger's nephrology/hemodialysis unit and helped develop the Chattanooga Kidney Center. Yium soon was providing dialysis at Memorial, Park Ridge and Hutcheson hospitals. He served in many roles at Erlanger and the University of Tennessee College of Medicine-Chattanooga Unit, including professor of medicine and co-director of the Erlanger Regional Kidney Transplant Center. Although he is retired, he continues to volunteer at the Lone Oak Medical Clinic so that he can help indigent patients.

An American Board of Surgery certified pediatric surgeon, Dr. Michael Carr also specializes in pediatric trauma care. He joined University Surgical Associates in 1986 as the first pediatric surgeon and first fellowship-trained trauma surgeon in Chattanooga. Also, in 1986, he served on the state task force that designed and implemented a statewide pediatric trauma system. Since 1989, he has served as the Pediatric Trauma Medical Director for Children's Hospital at Erlanger. He is an associate professor in the Department of Surgery of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine. In 2009, he was honored as the National Emergency Medical Services Hero of the Year for his work with the Tennessee Emergency Medical Services for Children, which aims to get access for all state pre-hospital and emergency department personnel across to have access to pediatric-specific training and equipment. Last year, Carr was recognized at the Tennessee Star of Life Awards ceremony where the annual honor bestowed on state ambulance services was re-named The Michael Carr Star of Life State Award.

-- Lynda Edwards

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Physician Award honors physicians whose performance is considered exemplary by patients and peers.

Dr. Mack Worthington and Dr. Coleman Arnold

Dr. Mack Worthington, 74, is chairman of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine's Department of Family Medicine residency program at Erlanger hospital. Over the last 20 years, the program has launched the careers of more than 100 family physicians and, by extension, touched the lives of tens of thousands of patients. By helping to train family doctors, the backbone of American medicine, Worthington has reinforced his own affection for serving as a primary-care physician. He says that the United States continues to have a shortage of family physicians, who trail medical specialists in pay and prestige. Yet, family medicine has its special rewards, he concludes. Worthington grew up on a tobacco farm in North Carolina and began his career as an engineer before switching to medicine.

At 69, Dr. Coleman Arnold is still active as a physician, volunteer and teacher. He began his practice here in 1977, and joined University Surgical Associates, his current group, two decades later. For years, Arnold has joined other physicians in travels to Third World nations where advanced medical care is either unavailable or too expensive for the masses. In Papua New Guinea, an island in the Southwest Pacific near Australia, Arnold and other doctors trek through jungle terrain carrying medical supplies to perform gall bladder surgeries, tumor extractions and hysterectomies. "We have to take in every sponge, every pill," Arnold explains. Guatemala, another of Arnold's mission destinations, has a large medical infrastructure, but many rural citizens of the Central American country are too impoverished to pay for care, he says.

-- Mark Kennedy

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Innovation in Health Care Award honors a company or individual primarily responsible for a scientific discovery or new process, device or service that can save lives or improve the quality of lives.

Tennessee Interventional and Imaging Associates

Chattanooga has a team of four doctors you could call the "clot-grabbers" -- they're experts at removing a blood clot that causes a massive stroke to get the blood flowing back into your brain to stave off irreversible damage.

Dr. Blaise Baxter, Dr. Steve Quarfordt, Dr. Justin Calvert and Dr. Harris Hawk work for Tennessee Interventional and Imaging Associates, which is under contract to do radiology work at Erlanger hospital. Their clot-removal technique is an alternative to what was long the only FDA-approved treatment in stroke care, a protein-based drug called tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) that's administered intravenously to help dissolve stroke-inducing clots. Some in the field call it "Drano for your brain."

A few years ago, when studies suggested that removing clots was no better than using tPA, the doctors rallied and took part in a landmark study that supported what they saw in their practice: that grabbing clots can have near-miraculous benefits.

-- Tim Omarzu

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Community Outreach Award honors a company or organization that reached out of its normal sphere of operation to focus attention on a health care issue or help solve a community health problem.

Project Access provides over $1 million every month in free specialty medical care to patients who would otherwise be unable to afford it. Celebrating its 12th year, the Hamilton County-based program includes some 900 doctors, nurse practitioners and physician associates who donate their time, with the cooperation of all three major local hospitals and more than a dozen health care clinics. "For a lot of our patients this has been the difference between life and death, between sight and blindness," said Executive Director Rae Bond. "It truly saves lives, saves people's capacity to be contributing members of society, working for themselves and caring for their families."

-- Steve Johnson

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Non-physician Practitioner honors a health care provider other than a doctor (ex. nurse, pharmacist, physician's assistant, researcher, technician, etc.) whose performance is considered exemplary by patients and peers.

Charlotte Smalley is the epitome of what a nurse practitioner should be, according to Dr. Phyllis Miller, obstetrician-gynecologist at the Women's Institute of Specialized Health. Smalley has worked alongside Miller for the past 22 years, caring for multiple generations of women, while balancing a part-time teaching job at UTC and raising her now 28-year-old daughter following the loss of her husband two decades ago. Throughout her career, Smalley has also served as director of a rural health department and as a volunteer for homeless health programs in Chattanooga.

-- Alex Green

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Health Care Volunteer honors a volunteer in the community who has demonstrated commitment and passion for serving those in need.

Dr. Walter Puckett is one of Chattanooga's premier heart doctors and the medical director of Project Access for its 12 years of existence. Puckett started his medical career in the late 1950s when there were no specialists -- doctors who had EKG machines could call themselves cardiologists, he remembers. Medicine has changed dramatically in the course of his career. "When I was an intern in 1955, if you had a heart attack you were in the hospital for six weeks, and such patients had a 30 percent mortality rate," he said. "Now, you will be in the hospital for 48 hours and they have a 5 percent mortality rate." Puckett said he got his commitment to caring for the less fortunate when he was a young medical student. "All my training was in charity hospitals that took care of the poor, so I always had an interest in that element of the population," he said.

-- Steve Johnson

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Administrative Excellence Award honors a health care administrator whose performance, care and leadership are considered exemplary by patients and peers.

Martha Weeks, 62, is the administrator and chief nursing officer at Erlanger North Hospital. Reared in Fort Payne, Ala., she graduated from Erlanger's former School of Nursing program and has spent her entire 41-year career at Erlanger. She started out as a staff nurse and then moved up the ranks to administrative director of operations and associate chief nursing officer at Erlanger. About two years ago, she received the opportunity to use her master's degree in health care administration when she was named to her current post at Erlanger North on Morrison Springs Road.

-- Mike Pare

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