Digital records empower many medical patients

Timeline fuzzy for county’s conversion

By Nick Tabor, New Era Senior Staff Writer

Just before Dr. Terry Fuqua closed his internal medicine practice in 2008, he ran ads in the New Era that encouraged patients to come pick up their medical records.

Only about a third of his patients took the offer. So Fuqua destroyed the records from patients who hadn’t visited in more than five years, and he brought the remaining 50 to 75 cases home and stored them in his garage.

He continues shredding records that pass the five-year mark.

He still has word processor documents with detailed notes from patient visits. But since his retirement, he estimates that fewer than a dozen former patients have called him for records.

Fuqua retired on the cusp of a new era. Technological developments are sweeping situations like this into the past. One day nearly all patient records, including those at hospitals and doctors’ offices throughout this area, will survive the way Fuqua’s notes have: on computer hard drives or in cyberspace.

Beyond duty

73-year-old doctor puts skills to work at free clinic

By Nick Tabor
New Era Staff Writer 
During his 38 years running an internal medicine practice on South Main Street, Dr. Terry Fuqua says he brought in a smaller income than most of Hopkinsville’s physicians.

He’d spend an hour to do every physical thoroughly. He eschewed high-tech tests—“gobbledygook,” he says—preferring to test patients with just his stethoscope and his five senses, unless he specifically needed the assistance of a machine. He made house calls for patients who couldn’t get to his building. Often he took patients into his private office to explain their illnesses and treatment, said Patty Gamble, Fuqua’s nurse for many years.

When patients came to him and said they couldn’t pay, he’d ask them to give him $5 a month. They could pay their full bills later, but if they coughed up just a little, he’d keep treating them. It showed they were trying.

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