As elected leaders grapple with how to salvage the work toward health care reform in the U.S., Dr. Will Ross hopes the debate will not focus on insurance reform alone to increase access to care for the 47 million people who are uninsured.
“Even if African Americans and other certain groups had insurance, there would be no assurance they would be able to access that care appropriately if it were not based in the community and provided by people they know and trust,” said Ross, who will be honored on April 24 as the Stellar Performer in the St. Louis American Foundation’s 2010 Salute to Excellence in Health Care.
“You have to have both elements – you’ve got to have an insurance card and you have to have a medical home where you can actually go and access the care by people who understand your health care needs.”
Ross said increasing the number of primary care doctors is particularly what distressed urban and rural communities across the nation needs. Currently, being a primary care doctor doesn’t pay nearly as well as being a specialist. Higher specialist salaries allow doctors to pay off debt from medical school and offer more lifestyle opportunities – another disconnect in the health care system that needs to be fixed.
“We have to have some way – some incentives – to increase the likelihood that those physicians will provide care in under-served communities,” Ross said.
“They have to be willing to take in a roster of patients who don’t have proper insurance. And that means that the existing coverage – Medicaid, Medicare and other forms of payment – will have to be expanded in order to compensate those physicians for taking care of populations that have more insurance risk.”
Ross is the associate dean for diversity and associate professor in renal medicine at Washington University School of Medicine, and senior fellow in health policy at Washington University Center for Health Policy. He is also an attending nephrologist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
Ross said service learning for students is one way to fill the void for the poor and medically disadvantaged.
“My whole goal, both here at the medical school and going nationally, is to try and move medical schools to provide more service opportunities. That way, students can go out in the community, provide care in the community and feel a part of that community,” Ross said.
“If the students don’t have that opportunity in medical school and they are not compensated well when they leave medical school as a primary care physician, then they’ll never go and practice in under-served communities – or they are less likely to.”
Advocate for health literacy
As a kidney disease specialist at Washington University School of Medicine’s Center for Advanced Medicine, Ross focuses on patients with diabetes, high blood pressure and kidney diseases. Diabetes and hypertension are two main culprits in kidney disease and renal failure. Ross is focusing on reducing the numbers of black men with high blood pressure and kidney disease through the use of age-matched health coaches to promote health self-management.
Ross recently completed a six-year term on the Board of Directors for the Missouri Foundation for Health (one of the nation’s largest health care foundations), serving as its chairman last year. He was instrumental in the foundation spinning off a non-profit center focused on health literacy, along with Dr. James R. Kimmey, foundation president and CEO.
“Dr. Jim Kimmey and I started looking at all of our grants, and realized how many of our grants were really requesting funding for health literacy,” Ross said.
“And we said, ‘Let’s make this a major initiative of the foundation,’ which we did, and I was fortunately able to chair that effort.”
Out of the discussion, the non-profit center Health Literacy Missouri was born. “It is charged to develop health literacy material – to analyze and conduct research on health literacy material for the state of Missouri,” Ross said.
‘It was hard’
Ross is a man of humble beginnings who grew up in the inner city of Memphis, Tenn.
“I had a single mother with six kids who was mentally disabled, and so we had it tough. We grew up on government assistance,” he said.
“We had very little direction. It was hard, and were it not for my grandmother’s own strong spirituality, I think we would have just crumbled as a family.”
Ross said he will dedicate his Salute award to his late grandmother and namesake, Willie Page.
“She made me who I am,” Ross said.
“She asked us to be faithful, put our nose down, work hard and not be so caught up in our selfishness about what little we had and think about all we could gain and what we can do to help others once we gain those things.”
It was during his high school years at Carver High School in Memphis that opportunity, academics and service began to come together for him.
“One important part of my education was spending summer of 1975 attending the Phillips Exeter Academy Program in Exeter, New Hampshire. It was during this time that began to realize I could compete with white students at their level, if not beyond,” Ross said.
“I subsequently decided to attend an Ivy League school when I returned to Memphis. I received a full-tuition scholarship to attend Yale University.”
Ross graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Yale in 1980 and his medical degree from Washington University in 1984. He completed an internal medicine residency at Vanderbilt University, a renal fellowship at Washington University and a Master of Science in epidemiology at Saint Louis University.
Previously, Ross worked at St. Louis Regional Medical Center as a clinical nephrologist. In 1992 he was appointed director of Nephrology and then vice president for Medical Affairs in 1994. As the hospital’s chief medical officer, Ross worked to transition the medical center to managed care and restructured the ambulatory operations to function as primary care homes. As president of the Physician Service Corporation during the same time, Ross supervised medical activities of Regional’s medical providers and professional staff at the affiliated Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis University Health Sciences Center, and University of Missouri– Columbia.
When Ross was working in the laboratory at then-Barnes Hospital, he met his wife of 22 years, Arlene Moore, now a nurse anesthetist at Barnes-Jewish West Hospital. They have two children: Merris, a sophomore at University of Missouri, and Naima, a freshman at Yale University. Ross is a longtime member of Washington Metropolitan AME Church in St. Louis.
His work to reduce race-based disparities in health care has earned Ross many previous awards and honors including, the Distinguished Community Service in Medicine Award by the state Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Commission; the 2000 Humanitarian of the Year by the St. Louis Human Development Corporation; and the Humanism in Medicine Award, Ethic of Service Award and Alumni Faculty Award at Washington University. He is board-certified in internal medicine and nephrology and is a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society and the American Society of Public Health.
He also was a founding member of the St. Louis Regional Health Commission that helped spearhead the Integrated Health Network for community health centers.
The Salute to Excellence in Health Care Awards Luncheon will take place Saturday, April 24 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Clayton. Tickets are $75 each. VIP/Corporate tables of 10 are available for $750. Individual tables of 10 are available for $500. For more information, call 314-289-5425.