Longtime UAMS Clinical Director Finds Respite in Corporate Work

It’s been more than 40 years since Danny Proffitt vowed — while standing in a cotton field that his family sharecropped in the small, northeast Arkansas town of Dyess — to make something of himself. But time has not blurred his memory of that moment.

“It was one of those hot, July days where the temperature is 98 and the humidity is 98,” he recalled.

Although the crew was fatigued, the men were pushing through to finish chopping one of the shorter rows of cotton by the woods, driven by the prospect of some lunch and a little rest before the group would head back out to cultivate another section.

“I remember feeling as though I was going to have a heatstroke, and I thought, ‘There’s got to be something better than this,’” Proffitt said.

A junior at Dyess High School, which had 140 total students and no guidance counselor, Proffitt devised a plan to go to college and earn what he thought would be a good, practical degree course: business. 

But in his freshman year at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, he noticed several guys in his dorm who did no better in their general classes than he and were pre-med. He had always done well in science and decided to pursue a career in medicine.

“I thought, ‘If they can do it, I can do it,’” he said.

Growing up, his point of reference for the medical field was a meager example through his family physician in nearby Lepanto.

“That’s what I thought a doctor was,” he said. And that’s the route he planned to take after graduating ASU in 1974.

In possession of a rural practice scholarship, Proffitt headed to Little Rock to attend the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

 

UAMS Accolades

Upon graduating, he chose to serve his residency at UAMS Family Medical Center in Fayetteville and in 1981 became an assistant professor.

A few years later, he earned tenure and took on the role of clinical director.

During his career at UAMS, which included a six-year stint as inaugural director for the Springdale residency program, he had privileges at several hospitals, including Fayetteville City Hospital, where he was named chief of staff in the early 1990s and where he also chaired many medical committees, as he also did at Washington Regional Medical Center.

Also at Washington Regional, Proffitt served two years each as vice chief of staff, chief of staff, chief of medicine and physician representative on the board.

According to his profile page on the UAMS website, Proffitt helped revive the Arkansas Perinatal Association and served as president, and, in 1990, Gov. Bill Clinton appointed him to a task force to help devise the state’s “Campaign for Healthy Babies.”

In addition, Proffitt has served as president of the Washington County Medical Society, county delegate to the Arkansas Medical Society and president of the Arkansas Academy of Family Physicians.

 

The Farmer in Him

Dave Proffitt said he has always been impressed by his father’s work ethic.

“He’s 62 and can work circles around a lot of people I know,” he said. “He’s always had a garden, and he usually would work all day long and come home and work in the yard until it was dark.”

Danny Proffitt attributes his familiarity with long hours and strenuous labor to his being raised on a farm, where his father had him chopping cotton at age 5.

 “My parents had nothing and were able to work hard and provide everything we needed. It wasn’t always easy or pleasant, but we survived,” he said.

And, as a result of his upbringing, Proffitt developed resilience.

“He’s been through difficult times and has always pushed past it,” Dave Proffitt said, “and he’d do it with a smile on his face and just keep chugging along.”

Instead of focusing on his own obstacles, Danny Proffitt threw himself into helping others.

 

Taking Its Toll

“He has the most compassionate heart I’ve ever seen,” Dave Proffitt said.

Like the work ethic, Danny Proffitt credits his capacity to care for others to lessons learned during his childhood, where he went without, many times.

And while he considers his compassion “a gift from God,” it also presented some challenges to him in his career, and 36 years after he started his residency at UAMS, the demands of the job and sometimes caring too much “started to wear a little,” he said.

Sweeping changes to the industry also were taking a toll, and although Proffitt wasn’t actively looking to retire from his position at UAMS, deep down he was ready to share more time with his family and also do some things for himself.

Then, the opportunity for a three-day work week leading health care at Simmons Foods arose, and Proffitt took it.

He believes the move to Simmons to provide health care to its employees was a wise one, and it’s also a growing trend.

True to his track record of a strong work ethic, his final day at UAMS was Sept. 29, and he showed up for work at Simmons on Oct. 1.

 

Champion of Primary Care

Although Proffitt is no longer in the trenches and on the cutting edge of the medical industry in Arkansas, he is still passionate about broadening what might be considered the less glamorous side of the health care system, but what he says is the cornerstone: primary care.

The clinics he ran are part of UAMS Regional Programs, previously referred to as Area Health Education Centers (AHEC), whose mission is to train family physicians in an effort to broaden the concentration of medical manpower throughout the state, especially to rural areas.

Proffitt played a role in helping set the clinical standards for the programs, which, partly due to its sliding-scale payment option, have attracted many in under-served communities, although that is not the main purpose for the programs, Proffitt said.

UAMS Family Medical Center is also one of 75 clinics in Arkansas, which is one of seven states and regions chosen, to participate in a program made possible through a Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative grant, and Proffitt said the state is doing some great things.

Innovations include a lot of education services, dedication to provide more after-hours and same-day appointments, and an electronic portal for the communication of medical information between patients and physicians and also among members of the medical industry, in an effort to provide more continuity in care.

The program also involves giving patients a 1 through 4 rating based on their risk level.

All of this aims to provide better care to patients.

“It’s a wonderful program,” Proffitt said. “[The state’s] statistics are catching the attention of think tanks and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who are looking at the data, and it’s eye-opening to them.

“We are leading the nation in health care,” he added, referring to the implementation of the private Medicaid option and also the innovative concepts coming out of the CPCI program.

“It’s the future of medicine,” he said.

 

New Chapter

One of the hardest things about retiring from UAMS was leaving the young men and women with whom Proffitt worked and hoped to have a positive influence on. So many times, former students would tell him, “I remember when you told me this, and I think about it every day,” he said.

“For three years you invest in the lives of those young men and women, and many turned out to be excellent doctors. It’s neat to know that I had some part in that, training about 260 to 280 of the doctors in the area,” he said. “I think that’s a big accomplishment.”

But Dave Proffitt said the lives his father touched were not limited to the careers he launched.

“When I’m out with him we get stopped all the time, whether it’s at a Razorback game or at Walmart, by former patients who say, ‘I’m going to miss you.’”

This change was also tough on Danny Proffitt, who had treated many of his patients for more than 30 years.

“I’d be lying if I said tears weren’t shed,” he said. 

However, now Proffitt is pleased to have more time with his first grandchild, Isabelle, 8 months, and more time to devote to his favorite hobbies, including playing golf, gardening, and singing bass as a charter member of the Singing Men of Arkansas.

His son calls him a Renaissance man, because of his ability to excel in many different areas, and because of his broad interests.

And Proffitt only intends to grow his repertoire, with his upcoming projects including a possible return to academia — as a student.

But this time, he would take the classes he wanted, in some key interest areas like history, economics, landscape architecture or agriculture.

A true teacher, education is close to his heart.

“I believe when you stop learning you start dying,” he said. “There’s always something to learn.”