2009 COUNTRY DOCTOR OF THE YEAR DRIVEN TO PROVIDE SURGICAL AND PRIMARY CARE
Devoted Physician "Drives to Save Lives" Throughout the Florida Keys
 For most of the last 30 years, a 90-mile strip of the Florida Keys was covered by one surgeon and one surgeon alone, Dr. Steven J. Smith, of Marathon, Florida. For two and a half decades, Dr. Smith covered two hospitals located over 40 miles apart, often making the drive between facilities three times daily, while being on call around the clock, 365 days a year.
Still the mainstay of surgery in the central Keys, Dr. Smith also maintains a robust general practice with some 4,000 active patients, proving his worth time and again as both an accomplished surgeon and a superb diagnostician. Because of his extraordinary role as both surgeon and primary care giver, Dr. Smith has been called “two doctors in one” by patients and colleagues.
For his longstanding devotion to his patients and his community, Dr. Smith has been named the 2009 Country Doctor of the Year. Presented by Staff Care, the leading temporary physician staffing firm in the United States and a company of AMN Healthcare, the Country Doctor of the Year Award recognizes the spirit, skill, and dedication of America’s rural medical practitioners. Staff Care has presented the national award since 1992 to exemplary physicians practicing in communities of 20,000 or less.
Dr. Smith represents a unique departure for the award. All previous recipients of the award have been family physicians. Dr. Smith is the first Country Doctor of the Year who is board certified in general surgery. Rural hospitals rely on general surgeons to remain viable, and general surgeons are in increasingly short supply in rural areas. Dr. Smith has been instrumental in keeping open not one hospital but two: Fishermen’s Hospital in Marathon and Mariners Hospital in Tavernier.
Though a vacation destination, the Keys are typical of rural communities from a medical standpoint, experiencing physician shortages, isolation, economic challenges, and a high percentage of Medicare and Medicaid patients.
Like country doctors of old, Dr. Smith still makes house calls. Indeed, he estimates that he logs six weeks of the year in his car driving to perform surgery at two hospitals, making rounds and personally visiting patients. He spends mornings in surgery and afternoons at his office practice, seeing an average of 25 to 50 patients a day. Nights often find him back at the hospital where he still covers the emergency department. Twelve hour days are not unusual for a physician who also is involved in the community. Dr. Smith, whose father helped liberate Dachau, lectures on the Holocaust and performs services at the local Jewish temple, as the community is without a rabbi.
As part of the Country Doctor of the Year Award, Staff Care provides the award recipient with a temporary (i.e. locum tenens) physician for two weeks to cover his or her practice, so that the recipient can take some well earned time off. Dr. Smith requested a donation be made to a charitable organization instead. Staff Care agreed to make this donation, and in a sign of his generosity, Dr. Smith matched it.
About Staff Care
Staff Care is the largest temporary physician staffing firm in the United States and a division of AMN Healthcare.
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