Families in Homerville, Georgia, say the absence of pediatric care is crippling.
“Clinch County, unfortunately, has never had a pediatrician ever in its existence,” Angela Handley said.
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Handley oversees the city’s only hospital, Clinch Memorial. She says along with providing basic care, they were challenged with delivering babies because they didn’t have the necessary medical equipment.
“We did not have an infant warmer at that time, we had to cut small pieces of heated blankets to keep the baby warm,” she said.
Parents Kelly Manac and Brandi Posley say they are concerned about the lack of accessible pediatric health care. They told Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Ashli Lincoln they have to treat doctor’s visits like road trips, both having to travel 40 miles to Valdosta.
“You have to take the day off work,” Manac said.
“Nervous. It’s nervous, because I have to drive so far away,”Posley told Lincoln.
Data from the state shows more than 30 counties don’t have pediatricians, including some right outside of metro Atlanta. Butts County that neighbors Henry County only has one pediatrician.
About 70 miles south, Taylor County outside of Macon only has one children’s doctor including Putnam and Haralson counties. The Georgia Composite Medical Board reports there are 15 pediatricians registered in Rockdale County.
Counties with 10 or fewer are Newton, Gilmer, Pickens and Spalding.
In 2023, Channel 2 shared Barnesville’s mother Candace Harwood’s struggle having to drive more than 100 miles to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta for treatment for her son’ David’s seizure disorder.
“Just to have more access to things because you never know what’s going to happen to your child,” Harwood said.
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Marc Welsh, Vice President for Child Advocacy with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, says the hospital partnered with Mercer University’s School of Medicine in 2023 to improve blighted pediatric health care in rural communities.
“There are unique needs for kids in rural communities,” Welsh said.
Mercer University’s Dean Jean Sumner personally knows the challenges for kids in rural communities.
“I’m a physician who grew up in Washington County, and my family’s been there for 200 years practicing medicine,” Sumner said.
The affiliation will be funded by a through a fund of $200 million that the Children’s Board of Trustees allocated in 2022. Sumner says Mercer has already identified an urgent need for more pediatricians throughout Georgia.
To help increase access to pediatricians in rural counties, Children’s is funding 10 full-tuition scholarships in 2023 through a program at Mercer University School of Medicine for medical students specializing in pediatrics who commit to serving in rural Georgia for at least four years after residency.
In addition, the funding will allow the School of Medicine to conduct and evaluate the pilot programs. Children’s will provide the specialized pediatric clinical knowledge needed to launch and sustain those programs.
Sumner says the proposed Rural Healthcare pilots and projects include:
- Helping rural hospitals be “kid ready” – To help rural hospitals better prepare and treat pediatric patients in emergency departments, this initiative will assist rural hospitals enrolled in the pilot program to be considered “Kid Ready.”
- Supporting rural pediatricians – Training and resources will be provided to physicians focused on challenges regularly faced in rural practices. MUSM has identified a need for specialty consult services via telehealth for rural patients and a network of pediatricians focused on rural pediatric health.
- Expanding behavioral and mental health support – MUSM and Children’s will work with schools, pediatricians and hospitals to develop a comprehensive approach to pediatric mental health in two communities with virtual mental health services and a focus on suicide awareness and prevention.
“We don’t go in and tell these communities what they need. We go in, and see what they have, and they tell us what they need,” Sumner said.
Sumner says the program is currently working with 22 hospitals and are in the process of preparing to include five more. They’ve partnered with more than 20 pediatric offices and are working with more than 40 doctors.
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