Mississippi County family physician Jimmy Heath retires after 42 years

After 42 years of practicing medicine, Dr. Jimmy Heath retired from Ferguson Medical Group-East Prairie on Wednesday.

Heath started his career working at Weaver and Heath Clinic in 1980, then worked with Ferguson Medical Group from 1994 to the time of its partnership with Saint Francis Healthcare System in 2019. After the partnership, he stayed with Saint Francis until his retirement.

Heath said when originally choosing what he wanted to do with his career in medicine, he wanted to "return back home" and "be able to take care of folks."

"So I delivered babies at our community hospital in Sikeston until 1986. So, to me, it was just a phenomenal opportunity that God gave me to be able to take care of folks from basically birth until when God took them home or until they moved off someplace or whatever occurred, but I just wanted to come back home and be part of our community," Heath said.

Heath said his family's been involved in farming and he's "somewhat involved in farming as well," citing it as another one of his passions.

He credited his grandparents' influence on giving him a positive outlook.

"My grandmother taught me how important education was and ... she taught me to be kind to people," Heath said. "She always told me it took a lot less energy to be positive and to be kind than it did to be ornery and negative. And indeed, she was correct. So, my grandparents had a tremendous influence in my life."

The physician said one of his favorite parts of his field was getting to know patients and watching them grow up.

"Be[ing] in a small town, you get to know the patients very well because you get to know their family," Heath said. "You get to be involved in activities with the kids. You get to be involved with watching folks grow up, watching folks go through the trials and tribulations of their life and getting to help them through difficult times."

Heath said a memory that sticks out in his career was when he was treating a child with a head injury.

"I had a young man that came in that had fallen off the back of a pickup and had a fairly significant head injury. In fact, we air evac'd him to Saint Francis, and I remember riding in the ambulance from the office of East Prairie out to the helipad," Heath said.

"Not sure how this was going to end, but, by God's grace, and the fact that we were able to treat him pretty quickly, things have turned out quite well. In fact, he lives about a mile from me now. Just had his first baby not too long ago."

While loving his work, Heath said a "trying time" for him in the field was when everything went electronic with computerized medical records.

"I remember ... in 2010, which was an extremely trying time for me because that was — you could ask several of my colleagues — I was not the most technologically advanced person," Heath said. "So that was difficult. But there's advantages to all of that great technology that we have."

After his retirement, Heath said he plans to visit his sons and grandchildren and travel.

But Heath said he's not going to stop practicing medicine completely.

"I am still going to see patients in two nursing homes in Mississippi County, that is the East Prairie Nursing Center and the Bertand Nursing Center," he said. "So, I retired from my office practice, but I'm actually still going to provide care in those two nursing facilities and I'll probably be involved in community activities."