Emergency Surgery in Rural America: Where are the Surgeons? | Dr. Joel Goodwin | TEDxLizardCreek

The headlining current debate about the Affordable Care Act, regardless of one’s political viewpoints, comes down to accountability of the delivery of health care and the math problem of how a country goes about paying for this care, to the tune of nearly3.4 trillion dollars a year. That debate, while extremely important, barely acknowledges what I think is an even more serious problem, namely the looming surgical specialist shortage in rural and community hospitals. The main focus of my current job, is to fill gaps in coverage (shortages of specialists) in these hospitals.
For my talk at Lizard Creek, using the theme of “Bridges”, I will be discussing the alarming problem of the dwindling surgical specialist workforce in rural communities, why this is important, why this is not going to go away anytime soon, and practical strategies (bridges) we are using at LifePoint™ to assist, bolster, and maximize the efficiency of these professionals, doing more with fewer providers, thereby bridging the conventional past with innovative strategies so that we can continue to field effective surgical teams in rural communities in the future. Dr. Goodwin started OmniPoint Surgical Services in March of 2014 with the goal of providing uncompromising quality surgical services to the community hospitals in the LifePoint system. His team has worked in 20 of the 72 hospitals in the Lifepoint system Prior to this, he was the director of a fourteen surgeon group at WakeMed Medical Center in Raleigh that employed nine physician extenders and provided General Surgery, Acute Care Surgery, Trauma and Surgical Critical Care services at that level I trauma center.
He grew up in a small town in North Carolina. His grandfather was a country General Practitioner for over 50 years and his father, uncle, and sister are Obstetricians in community hospitals. After finishing his residency in Seattle, his first job was in rural Northern Idaho. He spent the next 12 years working in small town community hospitals before transitioning to the urban, teaching, trauma and critical care position he held prior to starting OmniPoint. During his 20 year career, he has started, merged, and sold surgical practices, become an employed physician, taught surgical residents, been a managing director of a large academic, community based surgical group in a level I trauma center, done consulting work in Information Technology, and served on the Medical Advisory Board of MYCO Medical, a medical device company. He has won teaching awards given by the UNC residents, operated with and taught surgery residents in Nicaragua and worked with surgeons in East Africa and Madagascar. His best Boston Marathon was 3:28:12 in 2007, a time he sadly will never see again.
He and Wendy, his wife of 30 years, were high school classmates and varsity athletes at UNC. Their son is a graduate of North Carolina State University in Mechanical Engineering and their daughter graduated from UNC Chapel Hill this year after serving as captain of the Varsity Cheerleading squad and cheering the Tar Heels to the National Championship.
As Director of OmniPoint, Dr. Goodwin brings an experiential perspective that has proved quite helpful in dealing with the spectrum of care and challenges rural and community hospitals present. He looks forward to providing high quality, memorable care to his patients and the LifePoint hospitals he serves. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx