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Dr. Abdul Almatari is a general Internist who practices at the Pennington Family Health Center in Pennington Gap, Virginia. His office is in the medical arts building of the Lee Regional Medical Center. Dr. Almatari works with another Internist, Dr. Deepti Kudyadi, and Family Nurse Practitioner Teresa Ellis. The Pennington Family Health Center is part of Stone Mountain Health Services, a network of community health centers in Southwest Virginia. The Stone Mountain system receives federal funds to create access for low-income patients through a sliding scale of service charges. Dr. Almatari was born in Yemen on May 15, 1957 to a hard-working family that nurtured his early ambitions in business and education. As a child, he built a one-room store from local stone, then cooked and sold candy and other items to his neighbors. Badly burned in a candy-making accident while still very young, he received poor medical care from a hospital in the next town. The experience rankled in his memory. Later, a new mission hospital opened in his hometown, staffed by American doctors and nurses. His father was employed by the hospital as a security guard, and Dr. Almatari worked there sometimes after school. He also added more rooms to his store, eventually building a house for his family, using his bare-hands to haul and shape local materials. At the time, there were no medical schools in Yemen and even secondary education was available only to a determined few. After graduating from high school in Yemen, Dr. Almatari was invited to pursue his education in the Soviet Union. However, his experience with American physicians at the mission hospital made him want to study in the United States. He applied successfully for a secondary school scholarship to the Harrison Chilhowee Academy in Seymour, Tennessee, where he moved in 1977. There he studied English and other subjects. In 1979, Dr. Almatari enrolled at Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee. He earned a B.S. in Biology and Mathematics at Carson-Newman in 1983, then took several graduate courses in Zoology and Psychology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. From 1986 to 1988, Dr. Almatari studied at St. George's University School of Medicine in Grenada. Ill health forced him to leave school and return to the United States. However, the same ambition and determination that spurred Dr. Almatari to build a house with his bare hands enabled him to continue working toward his dream of becoming a medical doctor. He enrolled at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, where he took a M.S. degree in Public Health in 1990. That autumn, he enrolled in the Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee. Dr. Almatari earned his medical doctorate in 1996 and remained in Johnson City for an internship and residency in Internal Medicine. He completed residency training in 2000 and moved to Pennington Gap, where he has practiced ever since. Dr. Almatari is married to Wedad Almatari and the couple has three children - Abraham, Sam, and Ramsey. The Almataris reside in Jonesville, Virginia. They enjoy gardening, hiking, skating, chess, ping-pong, board games, spectator sports, and traveling. The Pennington Family Health Center is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. The premises are being renovated to include 9 exam rooms, a nursing station and medical laboratory, an expanded patient waiting room, expanded medical records and reception areas, additional storage space, and provider offices. Patients who need x-rays and other procedures are referred down the hall to ancillary services in the Lee Regional Medical Center. The Pennington Health Center is a busy place, accommodating between 60 and 70 patients each day. Dr. Almatari sees from 20 to 25 patients a day, working in the office from Monday through Thursday. He conducts daily rounds in the hospital and is on-call one night and one weekend out of six. Dr. Almatari also rounds in two nursing homes, Lee Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Pennington Gap and Heritage Hall in Big Stone Gap, every other Wednesday and some Fridays. Staffed by two Internists and a Family Nurse Practitioner, the Pennington Health Center offers care to patients of all ages. The nurse practitioner sees most of the children. About 60% of Dr. Almatari's patients are geriatric adults, 35% are younger adults, and 5% are adolescents. As a community health center, the facility welcomes patients from all social and economic backgrounds. An estimated 60% of Center patients are covered by Medicare or Medicaid, 20% are insured by commercial carriers, and about 20% have no insurance coverage. Dr. Almatari is especially interested in the treatment of diabetes, obesity, and gastrointestinal problems. Given his strong encouragement and attentive counseling, many patients with diabetes have engaged in successful programs of weight reduction and medication adjustment. Dr. Almatari feels that his additional training in psychology has been useful in helping noncompliant patients take charge of their health.
Living and working in a rural underserved area brings satisfaction to Dr. Almatari. Although he works in an isolated area, he is well integrated into a regional medical community that includes physicians of all specialties. He knows how to make the right referrals to the right service providers at the right time to optimize the quality of care available to his patients. Patients appreciate his knowledge, his skill, his compassion, and his determined efforts to take care of them. Dr. Almatari loves working in a community health center, where his services are available and accessible to indigent people; he loves helping people in real need. GMEC can usually locate a furnished apartment or home for residents who rotate with Dr. Almatari. However, we can offer no guarantees because short-term rentals are extremely difficult to secure in rural areas. If no furnished homes are available, residents may stay in area motels - Convenient Inn, Jonesville Motor Lodge, Comfort Inn or Travel Inn. GMEC will pay the cost of residents' lodging. The Town of Pennington Gap is home to 1,781 people. The population of Lee County is 23,589. Pennington lies at the base of Stone Mountain in a gap carved by the north fork of the Powell River. U.S. Highways 421 and 58A intersect in Pennington, offering two-lane access to the community from all directions. In or near the town are several discount stores, groceries, restaurants, cinema screens, specialty boutiques, a roller rink and a bowling alley. For fine dining, live theater, and serious shopping, most people drive to Kingsport, Tennessee, about 40 minutes to the southwest. Lake Keokee, Cave Springs, the Jefferson National Forest, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, and Natural Tunnel State Park are within 30 minutes of the Pennington area, offering hiking, biking, swimming, camping, hunting, fishing, and similar outdoor recreations. Lee County's landscape is a study in contrasts. The broad and beautiful valley of the Powell River crosses the mid-section of the county and includes fields as flat as the plains. To the north is all-but-impassable Stone Mountain and to the south is the spectacular Powell Mountain range. Forests in the northeast mask a landscape marred by coal mining, but the pastured lands to the east and west are unrivaled in terms of natural beauty. The Nature Conservancy has purchased and is preserving rare environments and endangered species in The Cedars and along the Powell River in central Lee County. A golf course and country club borders on The Cedars nature preserve. Major sectors of the local economy are educational, health and social services (25%), retail and wholesale trade (13%), manufacturing (12%), construction (10%), and agriculture, forestry, mining, fishing and hunting (10%). In 1995, the county's largest employers included the public school system, Lee Regional Medical Center, DeRoyal Industries (surgical appliances and supplies), Christiansburg Garment Company, and the Virginia Department of Transportation. See GMEC's city/county profiles for more information about Lee County and Southwest Virginia.
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Abdul-Latief Almatari, M.D., M.S.P.H.
Dr. Almatari maintains admitting privileges at the Lee Regional Medical
Center. Lee Regional is an 80 bed acute care hospital that offers a
standard array of services: emergency, inpatient and outpatient care,
intensive care, surgery and anesthesia, radiology, imaging, laboratory,
cardiopulmonary rehabilitation, occupational therapy, pharmacy, physical
therapy, nutrition and home health.