By Shannon Cavanaugh
Contributing Writer

Patients living in rural South Carolina will soon have more choices for health care closer to home and a better quality of life.

Singleton Health Center in Orangeburg is opening a group of interconnected private rural clinics in Gaston, Santee, St. George, Denmark and Hampton with a mission to provide health care to underserved rural populations throughout the United States and the world.

“Rural America does not have wrap-around services like in urban areas,” said Dr. Monnie Singleton, who specializes in family medicine. “Support groups are non-existent. And when they come for help, they’re sicker. The rate of diseases is higher, such as diabetes and cancer. They face so many barriers. No transportation. No facilities. No health insurance. The people who live in rural areas suffer in silence.”

Singleton grew up in Ehrhardt, S.C., a town with a population of 300. He knows first hand the hardships of getting medical care.

Now, he’s combining his life and 17 years of medical experience to form a private group of rural clinics. They will offer primary and alternative medicine with a holistic approach. Physicians will treat patients’ physical, emotional and spiritual well being. It is faith-based, not evangelical. He sometimes prays with his patients, like Elaine Johnson, who was visiting Singleton for a checkup on her depression and diabetes. Her son died fighting in Iraq three years ago.

“Since my son died, I got very depressed and Dr. Singleton makes sure I’m taking my meds,” Johnson said. “He’s given me spiritual guidance, along with medication. He’s providing what his people need. He stays on me about my meds. He cares about you. He’ll say, ‘Are you listening to me, hearing me?’ He’s a very unusual doctor. He tells me I must have faith like a mustard seed.”

Singleton is so confident in this model that he’s hired health care consultant Gordon Jones of Charleston as the chief operating officer and doctor of health administration to set up and oversee a spin-off health practice management company called Rural Health Management LLC. Hospitals tried running rural networking in the 1990s, but without much success, Jones said.

“This model comes from within the community, not from the outside. The philosophy stays the same on the front end in each of the clinics and on the back end, the centralized management makes it cost-efficient management,” he said. “Plus, it will give doctors extensive telemedicine system where they can access medical records and provide e-health assessments.”

Currently, the company employs 20 people with plans to grow to 500. Jones is aggressively recruiting physicians and staff. Once construction is finished, the office in Gaston will open in March as part of its first phase.

Staff members are visiting several other locations in the Lowcountry to secure property. Singleton will also duplicate the model internationally in Bequia and St. Vincent in the Grenadines and possibly in China. In the second phase, the company will expand into Kingstree, Walterboro and Beaufort for a total of 12 owned practices.

Most of Singleton’s private financial backing is coming from Caribbean investors and the Caribbean government is providing economic incentives, Jones said. Jones is applying for grant money through the U.S. federal government to help pay for U.S. operations.

Passionate about his mission, Singleton is ready to faithfully give compassionate care to all patients, turning no one away.

“Rural folk are poor, but they have pride,” Singleton said. “They’re not looking for a handout, but a hand.”

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