Doctor Robert McElhaney Jr. talks about COVID-19 at Mary’s Corner Medical Clinic Tuesday evening in Chehalis.
Dr. Rob McElhaney has owned and operated Mary’s Corner Clinic since 2006, but when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the community this year, Mary’s Corner was the first clinic in Lewis County to offer drive-thru COVID-19 testing.
“We’re a huge family. Our patients are our family. We are engaged with their health and we’re engaged with them socially. We’re truly trying to be the old traditional daily practice that way,” he said.
McElhaney, who graduated with a chemical engineering degree from the University of Washington, didn’t originally plan to become a doctor but was inspired by his father and brother, who both worked as doctors, and by two life-changing events that pushed him to go to medical school.
“I had a son born who has disabilities and that really sent me on a deeper spiritual quest in life for meaning. Then there was an auto accident. It was a bad winter, Michigan night. I came upon this accident,” he said.
A pickup truck had hit black ice and T-boned a car, McElhaney recalled. He said the man in the truck was in shock and the woman who was hit was strapped in the car — critically injured.
“She was really in bad shape but she was still alive and I felt paralyzed — I didn’t know what to do. It looked like she might have a broken neck and she was gasping for air. I called 911, obviously, but I tried to unbuckle her and take her out. I was asking myself ‘is this the right thing?’ I felt helpless,” he said.
Those two incidents started McElhaney down the path of looking into medical school and he took a night class at a community college on anatomy and physiology. He decided to give the MCAT exam a shot and did well on it so he applied and was accepted to Michigan State University’s medical school.
Originally from Brush Prairie, McElhaney moved back to his home state after finishing his residency and worked at the Mt. St. Helens Medical Clinic for about two years before buying the property on the border of Chehalis and Toledo with intentions to operate his own medical practice and work for himself.
Before the construction on the current Mary’s Corner Medical Clinic building was complete, McElhaney operated out of a double-wide Pacific Mobile portable, using it as a doctor’s office starting in 2004.
Now, about 16 years later, McElhaney finds himself adapting his operations to help the community during the COVID-19 pandemic.
McElhaney said that the number of COVID-19 tests the clinic administers varies from week to week but on average they do about 10 tests a day, which return results in two to three days. If the lab reports a positive case back to the clinic, McElhaney said that they immediately contact the patient, then send their information over to the county so the case can be reported.
Mary’s Corner Medical Clinic employs two doctors, one physician assistant, one nurse and support staff.
“I think everybody is COVID-fatigued but most of my staff is more personally burned out than professionally burned out,” he said. “I see a lot of personal issues that weren’t issues at the beginning of the year and that’s weighing heavily on people.”
He said that staff members that have children find themselves also acting as a teacher on the side during virtual schooling or are under financial stress.
“Because we’re in healthcare, the way I look at it and I think most of my staff does — is this is our time to shine. This is what people look for — assistance and understanding in illness,” he said.
McElhaney said that he is excited about two promising vaccines announced in the past two weeks and to see new technological developments in medicine.
The way the COVID-19 pandemic has become politicized and caused so much division is unfortunate, he said.
“In the last four years, I will just say that people question news sources, question facts and even question science and information from the CDC. What used to be science and was supposed to be apolitical has now become political and that is unfortunate,” he said.
McElhaney said that people in the community have asked him if the pandemic is real.
“Part of me just wants to laugh… how do I answer that? How do you ask that when people are dying?” he said.
McElhaney hopes to see a completed vaccine ready around the first of the year and available to the average person by the spring of 2021.
“I get disheartened when I have patients who are paranoid about immunizations because they think there’s a government plot or they think it will harm them somehow. … You just try to educate people,” he said.
McElhaney said that hospitals are taking a financial hit rather than profiting from the pandemic. The biggest healthcare expenses are surgeries and procedures and with hospitals, like Providence Centralia Hospital, having to reduce the capacity — the hospitals are taking a hit while insurance companies rake in record profits.
“People think ‘man the hospital must be doing great and having a boom financial year.’ That’s not true. How this has financially played out is that the ones having a boom financially are the insurance companies,” he said.
McElhaney has considered investing in equipment that could give him COVID-19 test results on-site rather than sending samples out to a lab but from a business standpoint, didn’t feel it would be worth it.
“If I thought COVID-19 was going to last for five years, we would change the way we do things — I would potentially build a whole other building but I think it’s going to disappear next year. I have tremendous confidence in the vaccine. There’s light at the end of the tunnel,” he said.
