Forest family practice physician to become president of Medical Society of Virginia

It’s been nearly 20 years since a Central Virginia physician has taken the helm of the Medical Society of Virginia, the venerable statewide association of physicians.

In October, Thomas W. Eppes Jr. of Forest will bring back the presidential title last held by Lynchburg’s Dr. William H. Barney in 1989-1990.

Colleagues describe Eppes, 56, as an excellent doctor, caring toward his patients, hardworking and fair minded.

But he’s not one of those people whose career was a childhood goal.

Eppes’ most vivid memory of his first serious encounter with a doctor is of screaming while having his toe stitched up. He doesn’t remember anesthesia, but he does remember his dad sitting on his leg so the doctor could work on this toe.

It wasn’t the kind of experience to inspire a career. That was to happen later.

Eppes describes his early years in Amelia Court House, then a town of 800, as “like growing up in Mayberry.”

He was a mostly good kid and an excellent student. People thought he might go into pharmacy like his dad, he recalled. But after he set the school on fire following some creative chemistry, there was doubt. After that, everyone thought he likely would go into

chemistry.

“Being a doctor was not on my radar screen until after my first year at William & Mary,” said Eppes.

That was the summer of 1971. He was the driver in an accident that flipped the car several times. He got out with a few scrapes and bruises, but his three friends were more seriously injured. His attitudes changed as he witnessed the efforts of the physicians and the staff in the Medical College of Virginia hospital emergency room.

“In a night of anguish, I especially anguished about my best friend. I prayed a prayer — ‘Spare her, God. I’ll do anything; spare her.’”

“And this is the way I think God does things sometimes. A week later to the day, I believe, in a dream that night, I understood what He wanted me to do.”

It was the day his friend came out of the coma.

“From that time on my life had a sense of purpose, that being a physician was more than just a job, it was a calling. And not only to be a physician, but to be a Christian physician.”

He opted for medical school at the University of Virginia, and knew in his third year when he began treating patients, “I was in my element.”

Each rotation was something he enjoyed — from psychiatry to pediatrics to obstetrics.

“For me, it was pretty much a slam dunk that the only place I could do all of that was in family practice.” He did the specialty training in Roanoke.

He interviewed in many places, ultimately coming to Forest Family Physicians.

Longtime colleague Dr. John Carmack said that Eppes as a physician “cares for his patients immensely. They come first. He’s a tireless worker — like the Energizer Bunny.”

Eppes’ taking on the role of MSV president “is a wonderful thing,” said Carmack. “He’s going to be very good at it.”

It wasn’t until Eppes entered private practice at Forest Family Physicians in July 1981 that he began participating in the Medical Society and also in the Bedford and Lynchburg communities.

Eppes’ many roles have included medical director for the Free Clinic of Central Virginia. He also is a former president of the Lynchburg Academy of Medicine, an MSV affiliate.

Attending an MSV meeting in the 1980s, Eppes said he was impressed with the importance of the issues discussed and the actions taken. It was work that “affected how I practiced every day, whether it be a rule or regulation or point of philosophy or a new way of doing things.”

He was encouraged in his MSV work by Dr. Ken Tuck, a Roanoke physician, who “grabbed me under his wing and started yanking me along.”

Tuck has known Eppes since he was an intern.

“He’s a hardworking and caring physician who feels deeply about his patients and his profession.”

Eppes showed himself able to work faithfully and conscientiously “in a variety of leadership roles at the Medical Society,” said Tuck. “I’m excited that he will ascend to the presidency at a time when there are so many critical health care issues to be addressed.”

In the late 1990s, Eppes slowed his participation in the Medical Society when he became a single parent for a time and felt his three (now adult) children needed him at home.

Eppes, whose family roots in Virginia go back to 1622, made that decision because “there’s no such thing as quality time, unless you have quantity. You have to have quantity time so the quality will come through in the snippets that they give you. Children don’t want you preaching to them, but occasionally they are ready to listen.

“If you’re not there at that time, you don’t get that right.”

Eppes enjoys working with young people, and volunteers in many capacities — teaching health, working with teens, and coaching young people of all ages.

Because of his increasing MSV work, he limited his coaching last year to the goalkeepers on the Jefferson Forest High School girls’ soccer team.

“Our keepers never worked harder than last season when he volunteered to do this position,” said Stan Golon, the team’s coach. “They did a tremendous amount of work. We’d never had a one-to-one with our keepers and a coach.”

Eppes will be installed as MSV president in October. He’ll be making speeches statewide, doing interviews, working with legislators, the MSV paid staff, and handling details required of the president of an 8,700-member organization.

Current MSV president Dr. Richard M. Hamrick III said the toughest part of the presidency is time management. The Monday after inauguration “you get home and you are shot out of the rocket — it takes off and the volume and scope of the work that comes can be staggering at times.

“But it is all important work and it all has got to get done. You have to have supportive patients and a supportive family.”

Hamrick says that Eppes brings much to the MSV presidency, including “an over-abiding sense of fairness and a wonderful ability to see things from all sides.”

Eppes expects to be out of the office a lot during January and February when the General Assembly is in session.

That’s when “the gorilla on the table” must be dealt with — the malpractice cap that has now reached the $2 million limit set by state law. MSV doesn’t want it to go higher.

But it’s not only the malpractice battle that engages the interest of the MSV members.

Eppes said that professional organizations like MSV work to maintain the quality of the profession, its ethics and the focus on the future of the profession.

He said he’s concerned about medicine, in general, because of the blurring of the lines between being physicians practicing medicine, and small business owners trying to survive.

“You begin to balance the scales between what you do as a business owner, and what you do as a professional.”

It undermines trust in doctors as professionals, he said. And one indicator is the move to change “patients” into “clients,” something he dislikes intensely.

“I’m not a provider. I’m a physician — I want that in the richest, fullest sense of what being a physician has meant for 2,500 years.”