Salute to Health Care honors physicians

The 2006 Salute to Health Care honorees are Dr. James T. Rogers, internal medicine specialist with St. John’s, and Dr. Robert Kipfer, recently retired gastroenterologist with CoxHealth.

Award candidates must show longevity in health care and must have pioneered a field, brought about significant change and gone beyond the scope of their jobs to improve health.

Rogers, who also serves as chairman of St. John’s Department of Primary Care, has been practicing medicine in Springfield for 21 years. He earned his medical degree at University of Arkansas Medical Sciences in Little Rock, Ark.

Rogers has worked for the past decade to ensure that high-risk patients in southwest Missouri have access to flu vaccinations.

Rogers, representatives of local hospitals and the Greene County Medical Society worked together on the Adult High-Risk Flu Vaccine Coalition, driven by a desire to make flu vaccines available to high-risk adults – those older than 65 or who have health conditions that make them more susceptible to influenza.

“We started out, for the first three or four years, giving those in Wal-Mart,” Rogers said.

As Wal-Mart’s policies have changed, the program has migrated out to local senior centers and geographic areas that target underserved individuals with limited access to flu shots.

“We’ve been mindful of trying to make sure we get those shots ... to community people who are high risk and lower access,” Rogers said.

While access to flu shots has improved through the years, Rogers said the issue these days is related to supply and distribution of the vaccine.

He also is working with the Springfield-Greene County Health Department to develop a community response plan for the Avian flu, as well as other pandemic flu disasters.

“We’re modeling it off of Avian flu – you’ve got to model things off what’s hot in the media, because that gets attention,” Rogers said. “But the same plan needs to be set up on any infectious agent that’s spread in a pandemic format. It’s a disaster plan for a rapidly infectious or spreading type of scenario.”

When asked about his future goals, Rogers first notes that he would like to see his three children – Ginny 16, Ben, 15, and Maggie, 10 – grow into well-adjusted adults.

“That’s equal to any professional thing I’ve got going on right now – carving out and making sure I spend family time, and balancing that,” Rogers said. Professionally speaking, however, Rogers is a year and a half into serving as the medical director of a pay-for-performance effort St. John’s is working on with Medicare and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“It’s called a PGP – physician group practice – demonstration project,” Rogers said. “We’re one of 10 sites in the country participating in that, and our goal is to save money with the government, obtain measurable quality for our patients and better coordination of care.”

He also continues to work locally, statewide and nationally to bring about change in health care.

“My criteria for participating in any of those is that I either learn something that I can apply to improve (in practice), or I have input – real input – to help model or change things,” he said.

Kipfer, who retired Sept. 1, practiced medicine for 33 years and served in an administrative role for the last decade as chairman of CoxHealth’s Joint Operations Committee.

“That was our first step toward really integrating physicians into the governance and management of Cox, and that was an important step for us to take in collaboration with our physician partners,” said Laurie Cunningham, CoxHealth vice president of corporate communications.

Cunningham worked closely with Kipfer in CoxHealth administration.

“The thing that was so unique about Dr. Kipfer was that he really had (the) ability to step outside of the situation and look at what was best for the system, best for everyone,” Cunningham added. “He’s incredibly smart and incredibly kind. I think that’s a pretty winning combination for an individual.”

Kipfer could not be reached for comment.

Event Details

What: Salute to Health Care

When: Reception at 6:15, followed by dinner at 7 p.m. Nov. 8

Where: Highland Springs Country Club, 5400 S. Highland Springs Blvd.

Tickets: $40; registration at www.springfieldchamber.com[[In-content Ad]]