As a family practitioner, Charlotte Hawkins '76 is one of the people who is often seen as the future of healthcare in America.
Hawkins not only knows a little about everything, but also a great deal about a few things, especially obstetrics. In fact, Hawkins's practice, which includes one other physician and one physician's assistant, delivers on average of about 200 babies each year.
Hawkins wanted to be a doctor ever since she was a little girl. “I spent the first several years of my life going in and out of hospitals with a urinary reflux,” she recalls. “Finally, when I was six, I had an operation that solved the problem. But ever since I was two and began to remember the treatments, I wanted to become a doctor.”
After attending Union because of its premedical program, Hawkins went on to the University of Rochester Medical School. She toyed with the idea of a concentrating in surgery, but decided to become a family practitioner since she had grown up in the small town of
Newport, N.Y., and had been exposed to family medicine for most of her childhood.
After ten years as a family practitioner, Hawkins has developed reasons beyond mere nostalgia for why she loves what she does. First and foremost, Hawkins enjoys becoming involved in both a person's and a family's life. Living in a small city like Cortland, N.Y., has given her the opportunity to work with grandparents and their children and their grandchildren.
And working with extended families gives Hawkins a benefit many specialists can never enjoy-a clinical, family medical history. “You can really gain a great insight into just what's going on medically throughout generations,”
she says.
Since thirty to forty percent of Hawkins's practice consists of obstetrics and gynecology, she has the pleasure of nursing a fetus through prenatal
care, performing the childbirth, and then continuing through the pediatric stage. “Thankfully I'm not old enough to say I've treated one of those babies with adult medicine, but I imagine one day I will be,” she says.
Hawkins landed in upstate New York through the National Health Service Corps. The corps had paid for Hawkins's medical education and she was obligated to practice first in a rural medical district. She spent three years commuting among three upstate clinics that were at least twenty miles from the nearest doctor or hospital. She was the only M.D. on the premises, so she was
responsible for the treatments administered by the assistants.
A family practice in the middle of the nineties has its struggles. Hawkins says that insurance companies and government regulations have become increasingly inappropriate. She cites the insurance company representative who calls just a few hours after she has checked a patient into a hospital.
“We'll still be trying to figure out just what's wrong and the insurance company will want an update on what treatments we're going to administer. It can be frustrating.”
Despite these difficulties and the increasing risk of malpractice suits, Hawkins treats anyone, regardless of his or her ability to pay. “I simply will not turn a patient away,” she states firmly.
“Family medicine is a growing field,” says Hawkins. “Families like to deal with one doctor and not a pediatrician, an adolescent physician, and a whole cast of adult medical specialists. With family practitioners, one family can see one doctor.”
And for many families in the small town of Cortland, Charlotte Hawkins is all they need.