County medical society traces roots to 1874

“While the organization was charted in 1905, the society traces it origins to 1874 with an organization of physicians meeting in Springfield that included participants from southern Missouri, northern Arkansas and western Oklahoma,” said Cathy Leiboult, managing director, who has been with GCMS for four years. “We have some ledgers from that era, but we don’t have a clear list of presidents’ names prior to 1912.”

President-elect for 2006 is Dr. John Mihalevich, a member since he started his practice in Springfield 30 years ago.

“Our mission is to be advocates for our member physicians and their patients. It’s basically a physician and health-advocacy group. We try to collaborate with the various agencies in town in improving the health of the general population,” said Mihalevich, who practices internal medicine at St. John’s.

The society has 440 physician members, a paid staff of three and three levels of membership. Active members pay $310 per year, retired members pay $100 and part-time members pay $150.

Although the GCMS is affiliated with the Missouri State Medical Association and the American Medical Association, Mihalevich said members aren’t required to belong to either group. Physicians are required to be in good standing in southwest Missouri, he said.

Health care business

GCMS holds quarterly meetings, monthly executive council meetings, continuing medical education for members and has a patient referral service for the community. The group also publishes monthly the Greene County Medical Society Journal.

“We basically are trying to look at reasons to be a member that sort of transcend the workplace, what it is about being a physician in Greene County that transcends the workplace requirements,” Mihalevich said.

GCMS works with the Missouri State Medical Association on legislation that will benefit physicians and their patients. “For instance, we’re going to be very much involved in the Medicaid reform issue,” he said.

Dr. Keith LaFerriere, a plastic surgeon who was the society’s president in 1990, has been a member for 26 years. One of the group’s greatest achievements, he said, was setting up the Medicine in Business coalition in the early 1980s.

“We got together with a group of businesses, a board with business leaders at that time, which included many of the more prominent businesses in town. The goal was to try and find mutual solutions to some of the problems that businesses were having with health care,” LaFerriere said.

The group disbanded around 1990, LaFerriere said, but it had served its purpose. “I think probably the greatest success we had at that time was understanding each others’ problems to some extent, and I think that was an early step, a seminal step in what’s happened over the years in terms of the medical community’s understanding and attention to the needs of our businesses.”

Another need GCMS continues to meet is supporting three medical students at the University of Missouri- Columbia through the Singing Doctor Scholarship Foundation.

GCMS members formed an act in the 1970s, singing popular songs rewritten with funny medical-related lyrics. “It was a major hit and they ended up singing for about 20 years together, appeared on some major television shows and went around the country,” Leiboult said. “Through the sales of their tapes, they raised these funds for a scholarship program. The students each get $5,000 a year for three years.”

Evolution

The society has changed over the years, Mihalevich said.

“It’s largely related to this kind of overall growth of the medical community and the polarization we’ve seen with the emergence of these big health systems that now hire their physicians,” he said. “When I first arrived, (the society) was a focal point of all professional activities outside the realm of direct patient care.”

Mihalevich hopes the society is able to recapture a sense of colleagiality during his term.

“Colleagiality is very much central to good patient care because physicians have to interact in working to improve a patient’s health outcome. We need to be a colleagial profession and that needs to be promoted, and I think it’s an important value that’s probably been eroded a little bit also with the changes in health care delivery in town. That’s how we interact with our colleagues, socially and professionally, because so much of what we do in patient care has to do with being colleagues,” he said. “We work together to solve a common problem.”

GCMS is less involved in hiring physicians these days.

“The medical society used to have a hiring bureau where an office could go if they needed somebody,” LaFerriere said. “Then they’d have people who had signed up. There’s not as much need for that with the hospitals doing their own hiring.”

One thing that hasn’t changed is the society’s overall role in the area.

“The one aspect of the medical society that is extremely important is it still is an advocate for our community, for our patients, and for anything that we perceive to be a need in the public health arena,” LaFerriere said.

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