Holmspun Perspective
High Risk OB
June 26, 2008
Someone You Can Trust
By Richard P. Holm MD
In searching for the best health care, there is a time to go to the high-powered medical center, and there is a time to stay close to home.
My wife Joanie was full-term pregnant with our first baby, the little thing was moving around inside of her, and due any day. We were thrilled to the core about the change that a baby would bring to our lives, yet dreadfully afraid that something could go wrong.
Both of us were too aware of the potential dangers we faced in the weeks to come. My wife had already worked in a pediatric hospital for some five years by then, and my Med School experience was one more of studying the problems that can occur rather than when everything is perfect. I mean this sincerely; I absolutely had to find the safest option for my wife and new baby.
Making a choice for local health care versus care at a distant city is a question patients and the primary care physician always have to ask. For twenty-seven years I have referred many people away to Sioux Falls, the Mayo, or somewhere else when the patient needed something not available here, or when the care would be better elsewhere. Sometimes we need the expert who only does that procedure, or that organ system?
This was back at the time of our first baby, however. What would be the safest option for MY family?
Our choice was to have the baby in Brookings because we had discovered a doctor we could trust. The hospital was close and timing has always been very important for obstetrics, but the bottom line was that we had a doctor (a Family Practitioner) that we knew was competent, caring, and well trained. We trusted that he would know if and when we had to go somewhere else.
Twenty-seven years later it is still the same. For the best health care, there is a time to stay, and a time to go. It all turns around having a doctor you can trust.
Take home message:
1. For our selves and our family, we all expect and deserve the best health care there is anywhere;
2. The best care can start with a local primary care provider, and sometimes she or he refers elsewhere;
3. But it always starts with knowing that provider is someone you can trust.
About Rick
Dr. Rick Holm has practiced general internal medicine and geriatrics in South Dakota for almost 25 years. Prior to his move to South Dakota, he served on the medical faculty of Emory University in Atlanta, Ga. Rick is a past president of the South Dakota State Medical Association. He currently serves as medical director of Hospice Home Health at the Brooking Hospital, co-chairman for the South Dakota Medicare Carrier Advisory Committee, and is an active member of the Brookings Marathon Development Committee.
