By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

If you’ve been to the Perham Health Clinic in New York Mills anytime in the past six months, you’ve likely seen the new, smiling face that works with patients at the local facility.

Dr. Amy Jones, MD began working at the clinic in July and has since been working with patients two days a week in NY Mills. She also works out of the Perham hospital on Mondays and Thursdays, where she is available for the same care as well as delivery care.

Jones’ residency program at East Carolina University showed her the ropes of the healthcare industry and helped shape her specialty for rural family medicine and obstetrics while working at the level one trauma center in Greenville, N.C.

“I specialize in family medicine with obstetrics,” said Jones. “I also do women’s healthcare and gynecological exams, prenatal care and I also deliver babies, which is very fun! I did the last two years of residency focusing primarily on rural family medicine. Treating people in those locations where there’s not a lot of access.”

Part of Jones’ job is to educate each patient on their diagnoses and treatments. She puts a high value on making sure each individual is involved in their own care as well as understanding why she may prescribe one treatment or another.

“I love seeing my patients every day and talking to them and getting to know them,” she said. “A lot of my office visits incorporate showing people pictures, explaining physiology, sharing the evidence. I share the evidence based medicine with my patients.”

Having delivered five children of her own, Jones is no stranger to the miracle of birth. She is hoping to grow the obstetrical practice at the clinic and advocates for continuity of care in her patients’ healthcare journeys.

“I have five children and I really have a strong heart for rural family medicine,” she said. “My vision is that women have an opportunity to keep the same physician from adolescence into adulthood, into postpartum and to continue on.

“One of the biggest problems we have today is we have a high rate of maternal mortality,” she continued. “And research has shown that when women are in these childbearing ages, they start to see somebody for OB-GYN (Obstetrician-Gynecologist) and they get care for pregnancy. You go to see your OB-GYN in pregnancy once a month for a portion, then you go every two weeks, and then you go every week. So you see your OB doctor a lot in that nine month span. You see your OB doctor after you deliver one time. Your care stops right there. You don’t see the OB doctor again until you get pregnant again. So you just don’t have that continuity that you would have if you have a family medicine doc that you have when you’re a kid, they’ve seen you as a teenager, they see you as an adult, they see you when you’re pregnant, they see you after you deliver and you have that continuity of care.”

Jones said that though this is not a one-size fits all care plan, it would greatly benefit a majority of patients. She mentioned that in other cases where someone might have a history of complications or other problems, a team-based approach would be used in that situation so that both the family physician and specialists would be communicating to reach the best decision for the patient.

“That’s kind of how I envision prenatal care,” said Jones. “You can get prenatal care here in Mills and you would deliver in Perham. That’s where we deliver and Perham has amazing rooms and amazing nurses. They’re actually the best birth rooms I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen a lot of them!”

Another local service offered at the NY Mills clinic is X-ray imaging. The clinic recently updated their equipment and installed a new imaging machine which not only is available to use in NY Mills, but is also able to be read and reviewed by Dr. Jones the very same day.

“If you’re local, you don’t have to go to Perham and get an X-ray,” said Jones. “You can come here and see me, I can order the X-ray, look at it and we can decide on a plan. You don’t have to go somewhere else. Plus our upgraded X-ray equipment gives us better imaging, which is really fun and exciting. We did a lot of work, our X-ray was shut down for a while when we were putting it in.”

Another added service to the NY Mills clinic is the physical therapy area, which was also recently updated and renovated to add more space and more opportunity for varying therapies.

“There is more space so they can have parallel bars and work on balance and walking activities and things like that more safely,” said Jones. “In addition to that, they also have more room to work with patients with standing activities and that way they don’t have to go out in the hallways, they have more privacy, so that’s fantastic too.”

Though she has only been in the area a short time, Jones is looking forward to delivering babies and working with mothers from every background and experience level. She hopes to grow the obstetrics side of the clinic to provide a higher level of care.

“On a professional level, I’m really looking forward to delivering my first patient,” she said. “That’s very exciting, being a part of someone’s birth story I think is a huge honor and that’s exciting so I’m excited to do that. I’m excited to be part of someone’s birth story and hopefully in the best way.”

As a North Carolinian with a lilting southern drawl, Jones gets asked about her choice of moving to Minnesota by many of her patients.

“Every patients asks me this,” she laughed. “I had one patient that said, ‘So, what did you do to get sentenced up here?” I didn’t do anything. I actually chose to come here because when I went to residency I knew I wanted to do family medicine with OB and I knew I probably would have to go more to the midwest.

“We don’t really do family medicine with OB in North Carolina very much,” she continued. “Most of our obstetrical care is managed by OB-GYNs, but I wanted to be able to do family medicine. I wanted that opportunity to see the adolescent female into adulthood into later in life and all the way to geriatric medicine and that’s not OB. I interviewed in Wisconsin, South Dakota, Wyoming and many others.”

Jones said that when she interviewed at Perham Health, she was met with such an accommodating team of Chuck Hofius, CEO, and Beth Ulschmid, Director Clinic Operations. She was given a tour of the hospital and clinic on a Sunday to work with her schedule and taken to eat at Zorbaz and to meet the doctors at the clinic while on her first visit. She was so floored by the hospitality that she knew she wanted to make the area her home.

“It was just really fantastic,” she said. “Everyone was super nice and so sweet, that’s why I came here. I also love the weather, it has not bothered me one bit. The snow is so magical and it’s so majestic. I feel really thankful and blessed to be in a place that’s a small town where people know each other and patients are grateful to have healthcare. I’m super blessed and happy to be here.”