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Not everyone could work with their spouse. But for Randall Rickard, MD, and his wife, Dr. Susan Andrews, sharing a family practice was a way to juggle two careers while ensuring someone was always at home with their children.
'We have always tag teamed, so we don't overlap that much,” says Dr. Rickard, before noting, 'except on Wednesday afternoons. That's our time off together.”
According to Dr. Rickard, he was drawn to family medicine because he wanted to take care of the whole patient instead of just one part. Marrying a Nashville native, he identified Murfreesboro as a potentially growing community. That was 34 years and an incredible amount of growth ago. Yet the Rickards' family practice is still run in a way that enables him to take time with his patients.
'It's okay if I run over talking to a patient,” he says. 'I enjoy the pace.”
As he takes time with them, patients may not realize the national spotlight stage onto which Dr. Rickard has stepped. His practice was part of the National Demonstration Project, which was the first national test of a patient-centered medical home model.
'In the early 2000s, family medicine and primary care were not getting the interest,” explains Dr. Rickard. 'The [Demonstration] Project and subsequent task force created best practices meant to revitalize family medicine.”
In his years as a physician, Dr. Rickard has seen enormous changes in health care. For him, the bottom line remains delivering higher quality at a lower cost. This commitment to his patients has landed him the title of Rutherford County's favorite physician. Medicine is not his only claim to fame, however. His 70 different varieties of daylilies were recently featured on a garden tour. Like his patients, the flowers take care and patience. And like the community he serves, they are growing exponentially.
As seen in the Top Doctors in Nashville, July 2015