Dr. Raymond Cox is the executive director of the Volunteers in Medicine clinic on Hilton Head Island.
Photo by Milton Morris
Dr. Raymond Cox
Age: 65, with no plans to retire soon
Originally from: Philadelphia
Academics: Bachelor’s degree from Howard University; medical degree from University of Pennsylvania; MBA in medical management from Johns Hopkins University
Other key roles: Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Infant Mortality, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; government affairs and public policy committee, March of Dimes; board chair-elect for National Perinatal Information Center; co-chair of the OB Partners Leadership Group for Ascension Health.
Hobby: “We play tennis. A lot.”
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Caring for patients can mean simply treating them when they’re sick. Dr. Raymond Cox thinks a better approach includes helping them learn how to stay healthy.
Cox found an ideal place to carry out his philosophy when he became executive director of Volunteers in Medicine Hilton Head Island one year ago this month. The free clinic was established in 1993 by the much-admired Dr. Jack McConnell to serve the “working poor”—the thousands of uninsured and underinsured laborers who staff the island’s tourism and hospitality industry.
“I was so impressed with the clinic’s mission and values,” he says of his first visit to VIM. “It was consistent with my interest in meeting the needs of the underserved.”
Cox was chief medical officer at Providence Hospital in Washington, D.C., and chair of OB/GYN at Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, Md., when his wife, Marilyn, a retired nurse practitioner, “informed me we were moving to Hilton Head,” he says with a grin and hearty bass laugh.
Not ready to retire himself, Cox was delighted to discover VIM—“the best health care job on the island,” he says.
VIM’s culture of caring, where patients are treated as friends and neighbors, impressed Cox, as did the fact that the Hilton Head clinic has been the model for 95 VIM clinics across the U.S., 10 in South Carolina. More than 120 volunteer doctors and dentists treated 33,000 patients at the Hilton Head clinic last year.
Cox aims to build on that model, encouraging a focus on chronic disease management and wellness care, helping patients avoid illness. He brags on a group of 60 wellness patients who lost 338 pounds and walked more than 22,000 miles in six months.
“The thing that excites me is that there is so much enthusiasm for making this type of change,” Cox says. “I think this is the right living legacy for Dr. Jack.”
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