Dr. Terry Hoyt of Van Buren, Ark., who has been providing care in Sequoyah Memorial Hospital’s emergency room for the past six years, is now affiliated with the hospital and will begin seeing patients July 6.

Patients may make appointments beginning Monday by calling (918) 790-3004. Hoyt’s office will be at Sequoyah Memorial Hospital’s Family Medicine Clinic at 1109 E. Cherokee in Sallisaw.

Formerly practicing family medicine in Van Buren and working in the Sequoyah Memorial emergency room since 2003, Hoyt is experienced in family medicine, which is the area in which he chose to make his career.

Hoyt completed medical school at the Oklahoma State University (OSU) College of Osteopathic Medicine in Tulsa. He completed an osteopathic internship at Hillcrest Health Center in Tulsa, and a family practice residency at Kansas University School of Medicine in Celina, Kan.

“It was a good residency,” he said. “I got good training. I feel blessed.

“I’m very proud I graduated from OSU,” Hoyt said. “They have been listed in the top 50 schools of medicine for the last 10 years.”

Since completing his education, Dr. Hoyt has focused primarily on family practice while also serving in emergency care at Sequoyah Memorial and in numerous other facilities for the past 20 years.

“My dream in life was to be a small-town doctor, and I’ve done that,” Hoyt said. “I wanted to do the full spectrum of full family medicine, from the cradle to the grave. To be good at it, you have to have a level of expertise. You’re held to a standard of care…held to do it as well as the specialist.”

Hoyt said he was in medical school when he developed an interest in rural medicine.

“You have to learn about a lot of things,” he said. “And the importance of the community impressed me. That’s when I decided I wanted to be a family doctor in a small town.”

Dr. Hoyt has been board-certified in family medicine since 1993. He is currently serving as president of the Arkansas Society of the American College of Osteopathic Family Practice. In 2008, he served as delegate from Arkansas to the American Osteopathic Association.

In Sallisaw, Hoyt said he has served and will continue to serve as a hospitalist. He explained family physicians see their patients in the office, but if a patient needs to be hospitalized, his or her case is turned over to the doctor at the hospital. The two work together to provide healthcare for the patient, and when the doctors determine the patient is well enough to be discharged, their case is returned to the family doctor’s care. This sharing of patients takes some of the load off the primary care doctor, Hoyt said.

Hoyt said the hospital’s doctors also spend one week a month being on call in the hospital’s emergency ward. The doctor sees his own patients in the morning, then, for one week a month, is at the emergency ward seeing patients.

“It’s the 4 to 11 (p.m.) shift,” Hoyt said. “That’s when the ER really gets hopping.”

Sequoyah County has a great need for family physicians, Hoyt said, explaining the American Medical Association recommends at least one doctor for every 1,500 persons, and with the county’s population closing in on 40,000 according to the last census, the county has a shortage of family physicians.

Which is one of the reasons Hoyt is happy about setting up his practice in Sequoyah County.

Hoyt and his wife, Katy, have a blended family with four grown children, Curtis, Gayla, Macky and Michelle.

Holly Dickson, the hospital’s public relations officer, said, “Sequoyah Memorial has an active staff of physicians, offers medical imaging, rehabilitative services, a sleep disorder center, hospice and homecare, and the sale of home medical equipment. Sequoyah Memorial also operates one the busiest emergency rooms in the area — seeing over 1,400 patients a month.“

For more information on Sequoyah Memorial Hospital, visit the Web site at www.sequoyahmemorial.com, or call (918) 774-1100.