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The Doctors Sams are still on the job

By J. FRANK LYNCH
jflynch@theCitizenNews.com

Fayette Medical Clinic is now managed by a division of Piedmont Healthcare, the parent company of nearby Piedmont Fayette Hospital, but ownership and control of the county’s largest group practice remains with its founding partners.

“We’re not going anywhere and we haven’t sold out,” said Dr. Ferrol Sams Jr., responding to rumors that Piedmont had bought the practice and change was coming.

Instead, Fayette Medical has simply turned over all of its business functions to Piedmont Physicians, which serves 17 offices and more than 60 doctors throughout Atlanta.

For example, the clinic’s computer network was switched over to Piedmont’s recently, an upgrade that required the clinic to close for two days over a weekend and fueled some of the fears, Sams speculated.

Patients will have a new provider name on their insurance statements — Piedmont Physicians Group at Fayette Medical Clinic — and the clinic’s 135 employees will have a new name on their paychecks.

It also means the clinic will get lower prices on group purchase of medical supplies, Sams said, which could benefit patients in the long run.

Piedmont Physicians already had two other offices in Fayette County, on Ga. Highway 54 West across from the hospital, and on Commerce Drive in Peachtree City.

The addition of Fayette Medical Clinic, with its main office on Yorktowne Drive at Hwy. 54 and a second at Shakerag Hill in Peachtree City, makes Piedmont Physicians Group far and away the biggest provider of primary care in the county.

Among the 17 partners at Fayette Medical are Sams’ wife, Dr. Helen Sams, and two sons, Dr. Ferrol Sams III and Dr. Jim Sams, who will remain.

Sams said that neither he nor his wife, who opened a clinic in Fayetteville in 1951 that grew into the current practice, have plans to quit medicine anytime soon.

“You’d have to write my obituary before I retire, because I’m going to die working,” said the folksy Sams, 82, who is nationally known as the author of several best-selling novels about growing up in the rural South.

Sams, a Fayette County native and son of a prominent landowner and politician, opened a small family practice with his wife, Helen, in a small house near the courthouse square in 1951.

Then-rural Fayette County was overwhelmingly poor at the time, and though there was one other doctor in the county, services were questionable.

In the early years, the two suffered through long hours and low pay to meet the needs of the community.

“We worked our butts off, but it’s always been a joy,” Sams said. “We haven’t had a job, we’ve had a passion.”

That passion saw the Sams Clinic grow and relocate several times through the years. In 1987, the couple and two of their three children, Dr. Ferrol Sams III and Dr. Jim Sams, joined with several other physicians to build Fayette Medical Clinic on Yorktowne Drive at Ga. Highway 54 West in Fayetteville.

Fayette Medical Clinic was established by the Sams in 1987, partly out of frustration over continued delays in getting a Certificate of Need from the state to build a hospital in Fayette. It offered some hospital services, like an emergency room for non-life-threatening illness, as well as x-ray and diagnostics, that have since been leased and operated by Piedmont.

Fayette Medical leases additional office space to a number of specialists, and all of the clinic’s doctors are on staff at the hospital.

“I have been an advocate of Piedmont Hospital since before it left Capitol Avenue,” said Sams. “I look forward to continue looking after sick folks under their umbrella.”