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Phone: (276) 523-8741 Michael Ford, M.D. is a Family Medicine physician who practices in association with Pradipchandra Kapadia, M.D., an Internal Medicine specialist at Wellmont Family Medicine in Big Stone Gap. The practice is affiliated with the Wellmont Health System, which operates a small hospital in Big Stone Gap (VA) and regional hospitals in Kingsport (TN) and Bristol (TN). Dr. Ford was born and raised in Roda, Virginia, near the Town of Appalachia. He attended the local public schools and graduated from Appalachia High School in 1962 before enrolling at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville for his undergraduate training. He graduated from UVA in 1966 and moved on to the Medical College of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Dr. Ford graduated from medical school in 1970 and did a rotating internship at Roanoke Memorial Hospital in Roanoke, Virginia, finishing his medical training in 1971. Dr. Ford opened a practice in Big Stone Gap and has been an integral part of the medical community since. Dr. Ford is married to Una Fay Ford, a registered nurse who works in the Emergency Department at Wellmont Lonesome Pine Hospital in Big Stone Gap. The Ford family includes three grown children who have established families of their own. Lietzle is a registered nurse with Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia and the mother of two children. Michael, Jr. is a psychologist who teaches in San Diego; he has four children. Derek has one child and lives in Sevierville, Tennessee where he works as a sales representative for an orthopedic equipment company.
Office hours for Dr. Ford are 1:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. He keeps afternoon and evening hours because he devotes mornings to the management of his farm. He sees about 15-20 patients a day in the office and about 5 patients a day in the hospital. Dr. Ford is available all the time to his own patients and is on call three days a month at the hospital for unassigned patients and two weekends a month for the hospital emergency room. Most patients in Dr. Ford’s practice are covered by Medicare (60%) or Medicaid (15%); another 25% are covered by commercial insurance carriers and less than 1% have no insurance. Dr. Ford enjoys the full range of family practice and sees patients of all ages, although he stopped performing deliveries in 1985. He estimates that 15% of his patients are children, 25% are younger adults, and 60% are adults over the age of sixty. Dr. Ford is maturing with his patient population, taking care of people who have been in his practice from its inception. He examines and interviews each patient in detail during each visit as an integral part of the decision-making process. Dr. Ford is an experienced and enthusiastic farmer, raising stock and a vegetable garden. He keeps about 75 head of cattle, miniature horses, donkeys, chickens, and bees. Dr. Ford encourages students and residents who come for rotations to help him on the farm as a means of appreciating rural life and learning to place patients in the context of their daily activities. Along with farming, Dr. Ford enjoys hunting, fishing, photography, and whitewater boating. A veteran preceptor of medical students, residents, and physician assistants, Dr. Ford has been affiliated with Duke University, the University of Virginia, and Virginia Commonwealth University over the years. Residents who do rotations with Dr. Ford will see patients with a broad spectrum of problems and will witness the way that rural physicians network with other clinicians and sub-specialists to make sure that patients receive the best possible medical care.
Specialties represented on the medical staff at Wellmont Lonesome Pine are Anesthesiology, Cardiology, Emergency Medicine, Family Practice, General Surgery, Hematology/Oncology, Internal Medicine, Obstetrics/Gynecology, Orthopedic Surgery, Pathology, Radiology, and Urology. Wellmont Health System is a non-profit integrated care delivery network that includes two tertiary level hospitals – Bristol Regional Medical Center (377 beds) and Holston Valley Medical Center (540 beds) along with Lonesome Pine. Residents who come to Big Stone Gap for rotations may choose to stay in area motels – Comfort Inn, Holiday Inn, Country Hearth, or Super 8. A local lady, Pat Bean, operates a boarding house and students often choose to stay with her. GMEC is often successful in locating furnished homes or apartments for residents; however, we cannot guarantee results because short-term rentals can be hard to secure in rural areas. Big Stone Gap is in the southwestern part of Wise County, which has a population of 40,123 (2000). Almost 5,000 people live in the corporate limits of Big Stone Gap and about 3,000 more live in neighborhoods just outside the town proper. Big Stone sits in the “gap” of a towering ridge called Stone Mountain. The town stretches across the lower reaches of Powell Valley, a place that is celebrated as one of the loveliest pastoral landscapes in the world. The local economy is diversified: educational, health, and social services (24%), wholesale and retail trade (17%), mining, forestry, and agriculture (11%), construction (7%), recreation, accommodation, food services, and the arts (7%), public administration (7%), and manufacturing (6%). Two major highways intersect in Big Stone Gap - US 23 and US 58 Alternate - and the town is served by a number of local and franchised restaurants, discount stores, groceries, and specialty boutiques. There is one shopping center, anchored by Food Lion and Wal-Mart stores and blessed with a good Mexican restaurant. Norton/Wise is 10 minutes away with more shopping centers, a two-screen cinema, several motels, and more restaurants. There is one large municipal park in Big Stone Gap, along with several museums and historical attractions – the Southwest Virginia Museum, the John Fox, Jr. Museum, the Meador Coal Museum, the June Tolliver Playhouse (outdoor theater), and the June Tolliver House and Craft Shop. High Knob Lake and Natural Tunnel State Park are about 25 minutes from downtown Big Stone Gap. For more information about the local community, see the GMEC profiles for Wise County and Norton.
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Michael B. Ford, M.D.
Wellmont Family Medicine is housed in a professional building on the campus of Wellmont Lonesome Pine Hospital in Big Stone Gap. There are four exam rooms in the physicians’ office. In the same building are a medical laboratory, a pharmacy, and an x-ray unit. Patients who need complex studies are referred to the hospital, which shares a parking lot with the medical practice. Dr. Ford does minor skin procedures, including the removal of cysts and scar revision, joint injections, and casting in the office. He does fiber optic nasal and laryngoscopy, cardiolite stress testing, sigmoidoscopy, and nail debridement in the hospital.
Wellmont Lonesome Pine Hospital is a 60 bed acute care facility established in 1973 as Lonesome Pine Hospital. It has been a part of the Wellmont Health System since 1997. “Lonesome Pine” offers a standard array of services, including emergency care, intensive care, radiology, nutrition, pharmacy, home health, medical and surgical nursing, obstetrics and level two nursery care, physical therapy and rehab, pastoral care, and case management.