“Profile: Dr. Paul and Susan Jones,” by Cayla Stanley
The Joneses serve the community well beyond their primary medical missions.
“It’s really kind of sickening to me.”
Not exactly the best words to hear about your doctor. Except when they are.
“He makes the rest of us look really bad,” continues Alex Garland, current president of Naples North Rotary Club, about Dr. Paul Jones. He has known the concierge physician—and his equally “sickening” wife, Susan—for close to a decade.
Though they’d surely be reluctant to accept the notion, the Joneses could be appointed Naples health care royalty. Named its Physician of the Year for 2014, Dr. Jones leads about 600 physicians as president of the medical staff of Naples Community Hospital (NCH). Susan serves as his manager, as his nurse, and runs her own private-duty service, Attentive Nursing Care. And between the two of them, their dedication has stretched past their family and their medical missions to nearly a dozen more organizations.
They see it all as a privilege. As Dr. Jones puts it, “I get to get up and help people every day.” “I got to be their president,” referring to the rotary club he hasn’t stepped back from. “I got to be a founding board member” of Neighborhood Health Clinic, where he and Susan still volunteer at least once a month. (Their “date night.”)
And in an age where the average primary care doctor spends about one-third of his or her time completing un-reimbursed paperwork required by insurance companies and Medicare, the Joneses both have joined the growing number of health professionals turning to the fee-for-service concierge model. That time behind the desk is now spent actively practicing medicine—whether at the hospital, nursing facility, office or home.
“This was a way for us to step back a little bit and go back to the reason we went to medical school in the first place,” Dr. Jones says. “That was to take care of patients.”
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