Scot Mitchell

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Scot Mitchell ’85 – Rural to Frontier Healthcare, Adventure and Discovery

BY LINDSEY BYARS

G

ary Scot Mitchell grew up in southern West Virginia between the towns of Oceana and Baileysville, an area referred to as Crouch’s Farm. Scot’s father worked in the coal mines in Kopperston, a career he did not want for his son.

“He actually took me into the coal mines and showed me what I would end up doing if I didn’t get my act together, and it taught me a lesson,” Scot says. “Being underground with the water dripping from the ceiling and the mountain popping and cracking and things like that, I figured I didn’t want to do that for a living and decided I better get my act together and get an education.”

Scot graduated from Oceana High School in 1981 with his sights set on medical school. Growing up in a rural area a good distance from any major city, Scot saw his grandmother struggle to receive the care she needed, inspiring him to pursue medicine.

“I watched my grandmother go through all kinds of health care problems and seeing that there was really no system for health care. She was going to multiple doctors for different things. I think some doctors didn’t know what the other doctors were doing and I think it really made an impact on me to look at ways I could help rural communities and help people not have to deal with those types of issues,” Scot says.

Scot started his college career at WVU as a chemistry major, but an advisor told him that biology majors at Concord had one of the highest rates of acceptance into medical school. Scot took his advice to heart and transferred.

“I ran into Organic Chemistry class, and that ended my medical career.” Scot laughs now thinking back, but the CEO of the Robert C. Byrd Clinic in Lewisburg has made a meaningful impact on medicine with a career that has carried him across the United States, to a remote fishing village in Alaska, and back home.

Even when Scot wasn’t sure about medical school, he never doubted that the medical field was where he belonged. In high school, he took an EMT class, and between his junior and senior year at Concord, took a paramedic course at Bluefield State.

“I became a paramedic my senior year at Concord and made the decision that I wanted to get out and actually work as a paramedic for a little while before deciding whether I was going to apply to medical school or whatever,” Scot says. He worked in the Princeton-Bluefield area for a while, and then moved to Greenville, South Carolina to work for an EMS system. As a paramedic, Scot got the opportunity to meet people from all levels of the health care profession—doctors and administrators alike. Still not sure if he should completely give up on medical school, Scot decided to ask his doctor colleagues if they would do it over again if they could go back.

“The vast majority said no,” Scot says. “That was a time when health care was really changing a lot. They were moving away from the old-time family doctor that would come and talk to you. I remember my family doctor. My medical history was on a note card. Now, it takes more time for doctors to document the visit than to do the visit.”

The EMS system Scot was working for at the time was willing to help pay for his master’s degree, so he enrolled at the Medical University of South Carolina and graduated in 1991 with a Masters in Health Services Administration. After graduation, he was offered an administrator position at the hospital in Hinton, West Virginia. He accepted and worked in that position for five years.

“Being in a leadership position gave me the opportunity to help communities instead of one

Scot Mitchell '85 with his wife, Bonnie at the Colorado River near Moab.

individual at a time,” Scot says.

During this time, Scot says HMO health insurances were making changes they referred to as “managed care,” but looking back, he says it was more like “managed cost,” reducing the amount of money they were paying hospitals and doctors for their services. As a response, Scot and ten other hospitals formed what would be called Partners in Health Network, a group that today has grown to include more than 30 hospitals.

“Our goal was to really combat the negative things that these HMOs were doing to us as hospitals,” Scot says. As this endeavor grew, he eventually left Hinton to become the first CEO of this network in Charleston.

After working there for nearly four years, a consultant and friend of Scot’s reached out for some help to reopen the hospital in Man, the hospital closest to Scot’s parents. He agreed and collaborating with the community, they were able to acquire enough funds to purchase the hospital from the previous owner and reopen it. Scot stayed on as their Interim CEO for one year.

“I lived in Charleston, so I had to drive almost two hours, one way, to get there every day and I was not interested in moving to that community full time,” so he left, accepting a job as a consultant working with various hospitals and clinics on projects.

Scot also spent a couple of years working with the West Virginia Senate Health Committee as a policy and budget analyst. It was his next move, however, that would forever alter how he defined rural medicine.

“My wife [Bonnie] and I got our kids out of high school and decided it was time to do a little bit of exploring and we ended up moving out West,” Scot says.

For the next seven years, Scot served as the CEO of a small hospital in Montana.

“I thought I knew what rural was until I moved out there,” Scot says. “The closest large

There were no roads in or out of that town, so it was completely isolated. You had to take a ferry or a plane to get in and out of there. That’s another definition of frontier.

- Scot Mitchell ’85

hospital was 100 miles away. The closest Wal-Mart was 100 miles away. The community there, the county that we lived in had 1.4 people per square mile, but there were 18 cows per square mile.”

Scot quickly learned the difference between rural and frontier. He says you could drive for hours and never see another person in Montana. Availability of resources was another huge difference between the rural hospitals of West Virginia and the frontier hospitals out West.

“We just have a lot more resources here than what they do there,” Scot says. “And I was surprised.”

After Montana came Colorado, where Scot worked for a hospital network and helped them develop programs, including what’s called an Accountable Care Organization. This project allows hospitals and doctors to work together to help healthcare and reduce expenses. Scot was able to create two ACOs that together cover almost the entire western half of Colorado.

Frontier life out West was certainly an education in isolation, but at least there were roads that led to new destinations. Scot’s next position took him and Bonnie to a hospital in a remote fishing village in Alaska called Cordova.

“There were no roads in or out of that town, so it was completely isolated. You had to take a ferry or a plane to get in and out of there. That’s another definition of frontier.”

In the summer, a hydroelectric system provided power to the island as the snow melted, but in the winter, Scot says a generator in the back of a tractor trailer was the only power source: “You just pull it in, plug it up, and that’s how the town gets electricity!”

Scot says he enjoyed this experience, the amazing people and the “sheer beauty of being in Alaska,” but living two days away from their aging family was difficult. He started looking for a position closer to home and was offered two positions: one as a hospital CEO in Minnesota and the other at a hospital in California. Before he could accept either, a CEO position opened at the Robert C. Byrd Clinic in Lewisburg, West Virginia and he accepted.

“Ultimately, we thought we would come back to West Virginia eventually,” Scot says. “We thought it would be a little bit later in my career.”

Scot says being close to their family was an important reason for the decision to accept his position at the Robert C. Byrd Clinic, but also because of the clinic’s affiliation with the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine.

“We’re really making improvements with how we function as a clinic and still see patients, but then we also serve that mission to be an educational setting.” The clinic has over 40 providers— physicians and nurse practitioners—and they are home to two-dozen residents who are training in family medicine and osteopathic neuromuscular manipulation therapy.

Even if Scot feels the need for another adventure, Bonnie has made it clear this will continue to be their home: “My wife told me we’re not moving ever again.”