Husband-and-wife team Bob Qualheim, M.D., and nurse practitioner Tina Qualheim recently opened Elkin’s only nephrology-focused practice earlier this year.
ELKIN — From a young age, Bob Qualheim established himself as a trailblazer seeking to get to the heart of the matter of things. As an Elkin High School student about five decades ago, he started an underground high school newspaper with friends to create a medium for alternative sociopolitical views. Now Bob Qualheim, M.D., with dozens of years of medical experience to his name, he is still seeking a way to do things better — this time, in the arena of patient care.
“Here I am 50 years later, still in the same vein of doing things differently because they need to be,” Qualheim said. “We’re very disillusioned with medicine in general because of the way it’s going. Most of it is driven by administrative goals,” such as profits and business metrics set by hospital administrators who have business degrees and no medical training.
“They just pound on the providers to see 25 or 30 people a day,” Qualheim said, which means the time a physician actually spends with a patient is mere minutes.
“It’s just a sin to treat people that way. I can’t treat people that way, so our whole concept is we are low volume with long visits — we want to get to the meat of the matter,” he said, then rattled off one of the many quotes of famous physicians that he peppers his conversations with: “A good physician treats the disease. A great physician treats the patient that has the disease.”
So, after spending the majority of his career working in Boone, it was time to fulfill the vision he had for his career during his boyhood in Elkin.
In a bungalow next to Rumple Furniture on North Bridge Street, Qualheim has finally set up his hometown medical practice, called Foothills Nephrology. He believes it to be the first private practice specializing in nephrology — the treatment of kidney disorders — in Elkin. The other nephrology treatment options in town are provided by physicians who commute to Elkin, usually from Winston-Salem, he said.
Qualheim moved to Elkin with his mother around the age of 3, following his father’s death. His mother, Phyllis Qualheim, is a retired nurse who still lives in town. She will turn 95 later this month. The adults who surrounded Qualheim in his boyhood all had a connection to medicine. His grandfather was a surgeon in Elkin, and his father was also a physician.
Bob Qualheim co-owns the new Elkin practice with his wife, Tina Qualheim, who is a nurse practitioner with a specialty in geriatrics. They said they were lucky enough to buy a house in Elkin during a challenging real estate market, where they enjoy cooking and working in the yard.
Tina Qualheim, who spent the past year caring for hospitalized COVID-19 patients, also would like to grow the practice to work with patients with autism. Her son has autism and she is acutely aware of the limited care options for adults with autism. Her natural compassion combined with that parenting experience is brimming to find an outlet within the autism community.
Once, when she and Bob Qualheim were waiting to go through security at the airport, the line was held up for nearly an hour while one section of the queue was halted when a young man refused to pass through the x-ray machine.
When Tina pointed the situation out to Bob and identified the young man as likely having autism, he walked up and asked the young man’s father if Tina could try helping, explaining her background. The father of the young man agreed.
Tina asked what the young man liked and it turned out he was very calmed by his tablet, which had already been sent down the conveyer belt through security. Tina asked the security personnel to retrieve it, asked the young man to show her what he liked on the tablet, and then turned their attention back to the task at hand.
“I said, ‘You know we’re going to have to get through this. It’s not going to hurt you,’” she recounted. “‘I’ll go first and you’re going to go behind me.’”
She explained she would give his tablet back to him once he walked through.
“I turned around and looked at him and said, “See, it’s that simple and now it’s your turn,” Tina Qualheim said. “And within 20 minutes, I had him through. It had been an hour since it all started and the daddy was in tears.”
It turned out the family, who was Indian, were taking a short flight within the United States as sort of a practice flight in preparation for the young man’s first flight to India for an important family event.
The Qualheims have bonded over their interest and care for people with autism, as they both are naturally compassionate and both enjoy furthering their medical knowledge by keeping up on the latest research. Tina Qualheim wrote her thesis for her doctorate in nursing on the state of care for adults with autism. The disorder has physiological aspects that intersect with Bob Qualheim’s medical specialties.
“It’s interesting — the biochemistry and the physiology of autism,” Bob Qualheim said. “It’s very challenging. I enjoy reading and learning stuff. When you learn those things and you apply it to the autistic community, some powerful ideas show up.”
While creating an autism initiative in the community is definitely on their agenda, for now the pair are working to finesse the details of their new office on North Bridge Street. They are finalizing their in-network status with all of the major insurance carriers and fine-tuning their every-other-week schedule for on-site ultrasounds and imaging. Such imaging tends to require an empty stomach, so patients show up following an overnight fast.
The Qualheim’s office is a converted house, and since it has a full kitchen, patients are encouraged to linger after their appointment and enjoy Tina’s fresh-baked blueberry banana bread.
“They’re really hungry by the time it’s over,” Tina said in a manner implying there really was no other option than to bake her patients banana bread. They are offered coffee, as well, with a variety of diabetic-friendly sweeteners. She said if any future patients have further dietary restrictions such as gluten free, she is confident she can accommodate them with a homemade post-ultrasound snack.
Lisa Michals may be reached at 336-448-4968 or follow her on Twitter @lisamichals3.