Tift Regional Medical Center CMO Dr. William Guest, honored by Healthcare Georgia Foundation

ATLANTA — Five individuals and one community collaborative were honored for their volunteer service in support of improving the health care of Georgians through the Healthcare Georgia Foundation’s 2016 Joseph D. Greene Community Service Award. Among them was Dr. William Guest, chief medical officer and senior vice president of quality, clinical integration and medical affairs at Tift Regional Medical Center.

This year’s recipients of the award were announced by the foundation at Connections 2016: Building a Healthier Georgia Through Community Partnerships, its seventh statewide convening of nonprofit grantees, partners and community leaders.

Guest is a volunteer board member of the Southwest Georgia Area Health Education Center. For most of his 25 years of service, Guest served as the organization’s board chair while mentoring and precepting medical students, encouraging them to practice in rural Georgia, meeting with legislators to educate them about the challenges faced by rural populations and how they might address those challenges, engaging with CEOs of area hospitals, and participating in the SOWEGA-AHEC Pathway to Med School program.

Several people impacted by Guest’s service made remarks in a video highlighting his most recent honor. Guest himself spoke of his service and passion for medicine.

“I have had the privilege of watching Dr. Guest for 25 years, and I have seen in him in such a variety of settings,” said Pam Reynolds, retired executive director and founder of SOWEGA-AHEC who nominated Guest for the honor. “I’ve seen him with students being passionate with them. I’ve seen him with legislators convincing them what the rural population needs and how they might help meet the needs of our region.”

Reynolds recalled a time Guest shared his passion for medicine and practicing in rural Georgia to a group of medical students.

“As he is describing how you should practice and the type of practitioner you would want taking care of yourself, these students are just moving forward in their seat like they can’t even believe what they are hearing and these students are getting these seeds planted in them,” she said. “My hope is they will become rural practitioners believing in practicing medicine the way Dr. Guest describes primary care medicine.”

Guest spoke of the beginning of his involvement with SOWEGA-AHEC, which started when Dr. George Chastain was the chief medical officer at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital.

“George and I served on the Composite State Board of Medical Examiners together,” Guest said. “That’s where we met, and he asked that I participate with Pam Reynolds and (Dr.) Jim Hotz and Phoebe, which were the founding groups of the Area Health Education Center. I suddenly realized that God had placed strong leaders in my path, and so I followed their lead and they wouldn’t let me leave for the past 25 years.”

Guest said he’d wanted to be a physician since childhood, having watched his father go through a debilitating illness.

“I later became interested in teaching because, as you know, Georgia has a shortage of physicians and because my family and I chose to live in rural Georgia,” he said. “Georgia not only has the shortage of physicians but also has the maldistribution of physicians, and so we needed to be able to expand that pool. I wanted to help bring qualified health care people to our region and then also be able to pass the baton so it was self-sustaining.”

Guest further spoke on the patient and physician relationship, and the role the physician has in listening to what the patient has to say to determine the valuable information they have to share about what is concerning them — and the pride he takes on mentoring future health care professionals.

“What I know is that the AHEC over its 25 years has worked to recruit physicians, retain physicians, recruit other allied health professionals,” Guest said. “The AHEC philosophy is to grow your own. That’s a lot easier process if our people have roots here than to spend big dollars to bring someone in and then they are there one or two years and then leave. So, again, recruitment, education (are important) to our area.”

Laura Calhoun, the newly minted SOWEGA-AHEC executive director, commented on the critical role Guest plays in the organization’s mission.

“With any organization like ours, a nonprofit, you have to have people like Dr. Guest willing to give their time at no cost,” she said. “He’s a volunteer and believes in the same mission that we have, and having that medical background and the focus that we have on bringing health care to Southwest Georgia. Having him here will be key to my success in the future of SOWEGA-AHEC.”