Dr. Penny Beach Helps Lead Rebrand of FMRI Clinics

by Steven Reames 

When the Family Medicine Health Center (FMHC) board decided it need to rebrand its clinic name, Dr. Penny Beach wasn’t so sure, “I was a late convert to the process because it is so time-consuming and expensive.” But she also knew that the small health system of eight clinics operated by the Family Medicine Residency of Idaho (FMRI) had a bit of an identity crisis. “People would just call us 'Family Medicine,' whether they were referring to the clinics or to the residency. And it just did not stand out as anything special.”

But what FMRI has done with FMHC since it started in the mid-1970s is something special. “We see more than 110,000 patients a year from birth to palliative and hospice care,” said Dr. Beach. FMRI is one of the original 11 Teaching Health Centers in the nation, a combination of being a Federally Qualified Health Center and a residency program. “A lot of people viewed us as training center for Idaho’s next generation of family physicians with a few patients. What they couldn't see sometimes with our old name is that we are actually one of the state’s largest Medicaid providers and there is a lot more going on clinically than one might suppose.”

By Steven Reames, Executive Director, Ada County Medical Society

In a season where many are contemplating and expressing some of the deeper values they hold dearest – such as family, faith, generosity – I have been mulling on this phrase: “But these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” These are words most of us have probably heard at a wedding, but it might seem a bit of a jump to think of them as words that could apply to a medical community. I do think that they could provide us with a lens to look at the challenges healthcare faces as we strive for novel solutions to old and emerging problems.

By Steven Reames, Executive Director, Ada County Medical Society

Throughout this past year, as the medical profession has been overwhelmed with responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous voices have called for transforming medical culture. A couple of examples:

By Steven Reames, Executive Director, Ada County Medical Society

On the first anniversary of natural disasters, it is frequently a time to reflect on the impact of cataclysmic events in our personal and communal lives. After a year of living with COVID-19, it is all too easy to identify the massive changes in the way we live, work, play, and relate to each other. But what then? Fifty years from now, or even 500 years from now, will this be only a year in chronological history for students to memorize and get right on a test? Or is this a test, for us as a people, to get right in this moment of history?