This article first appeared in the WVSOM Magazine’s 2020 winter edition and represents practice prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Part of WVSOM’s mission is to graduate physicians who will practice in rural and underserved areas of West Virginia. Scott Keffer, D.O., a 1996 graduate, is one alumnus who wouldn’t want to practice anywhere other than the Mountain State.
Keffer, who lives in the Ansted, W.Va., area, works as a family medicine doctor and is chief of medical staff at Plateau Medical Center in Oak Hill. While he said it’s rewarding to practice medicine in the hospital in which he was born, he receives professional gratification from another source — his biweekly travels to a nursing home a little more than two hours away.
“I wanted to spend time with patients, especially ones who needed extra time, but I hated inconveniencing people and making them wait in waiting rooms,” Keffer said.
“That part of the job was extremely stressful to me, so now I’m a hospitalist and work in nursing homes. I don’t have a specific schedule and I’m seeing patients where they live, so they aren’t waiting around for me. This gives me more time to sit and talk to them and get to know their families. It’s a more intimate setting than having someone come into an office that’s your space. You’re actually in the patient’s space and you can learn some good lessons from them. These patients all lived interesting lives prior to living in a nursing home, and there’s a lot of value in that.”
This spring will mark Keffer’s 20th year as the medical director of Wyoming County Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. In 2000, he received a cold call from the facility’s administrator, who asked if he would be interested in caring for its patients. She told Keffer she had “heard good things about him.”
The nursing home was in Mullens, W.Va., and having only ever been to the town once when he was young, Keffer wasn’t even sure he knew where Mullens was. After a bit more conversation, Keffer finally found out that the woman got his name at the beauty salon after asking if anybody knew a good doctor. As is par for the course in small towns, word of mouth ended up being the best way to obtain information.
At that time Keffer had been in practice a little more than six months. A visit to the nursing home, some homemade cookies and a negotiation with the corporate office influenced Keffer’s decision to take the position.
“I found that I really enjoyed the work and the people. There was no one else willing to do that work,” he said.
During his visits to the nursing home, he sees about 20-25 patients. Their issues and ailments can range from complex scenarios requiring the consultation of specialists to simple visits with patients who just need someone to check on them.
Keffer first gained exposure to nursing home visits and making house calls alongside physicians while he completed rotations in his third and fourth years of medical school. He recalls shadowing physicians who didn’t have many additional resources and who were “docs in a box” — doctors who performed many roles in hospitals and clinics that didn’t have access to specialists.
The first physician Keffer ever shadowed, however, was his family physician, Donald Newell Jr., D.O., during a mentorship program in his senior year of high school. This is when Keffer realized he wanted to become a physician. Donald Newell Sr., one of WVSOM’s founders, encouraged Keffer to tour campus. He gave Keffer a note with the name Fred Smith on it and was told to call him for a tour. As a high school senior, he visited WVSOM and immediately set his sights on attending medical school there. He completed his undergraduate degree from Marshall University and, in the summer of 1992, began his osteopathic medical education at WVSOM.
“In the year I worked with Dr. Newell, I got to witness his demeanor and the way he thought about patients and knew them as people instead of just a collection of diseases,” Keffer said.
Growing up, Keffer knew more D.O.s than M.D.s. Now he is serving as an osteopathic physician in his home state, and passing that passion to his daughter, Savannah Keffer, who is on track to do the same thing as her father. She’s a Class of 2023 medical student at WVSOM.
“I always wanted to have a profession that would allow me to come back home so I could provide for my family and not have to leave the area,” he said. “That was another reason I was drawn to medicine: It’s stable, and you can actually do some good for your community.”