Dailey retiring after 40 years as Nashville physician
Dr. Janet Dailey is forwarding her patient files in preparation for her May 28 retirement. She is selling the building housing her Nashville Medical Clinic after 40 years as a family physician.
Dr. Janet Dailey is all about fresh starts.
The Nashville physician tells her patients each day is a chance to make healthier choices, eliminate bad habits and think more positive thoughts. In closing out 40 years of her medical practice, she said, “My hope is that my patients might remember that those choices are likely far more beneficial than all the pills I could ever prescribe.”
Dailey has been gradually easing toward her May 28 retirement. She’s working to sell the small building housing her Nashville Medical Clinic and its parking lot at the intersection of Ohio routes 39 and 514. Early in the year, she notified her 1,500 patients scattered throughout Holmes and surrounding counties of their need to transfer to a new doctor.
As patients have notified her of their moves, she has heard the sadness in their voices. They know she’s a one-of-a-kind family physician.
In 2015 Dailey simplified her practice by eliminating all insurance billing and Medicare and Medicaid to offer more economical care. Most of her patients have no insurance or have insurance with high deductibles. Many are self-employed and have a hard time finding insurance.
“A substantial number of my patients can’t afford the high cost of medical care,” Dailey said. “I spend a lot of my time finding economical ways for my patients to afford their medications and hospital care.”
Joel Pomerene Hospital in Millersburg, she said, has been a valuable partner in providing self-pay programs to assist her patients.
Even after she made the change to self-pay, some of her patients stayed with her, she said, “because they didn’t want to go somewhere else.”
As the clinic’s only doctor, Dailey has charted her own course. “I think what we have here is personal care,” she said.
While Dailey switched to electronic records five years ago and understands their importance, she’s been careful not to allow them to remove the human element of a patient visit. “I will not type while the patient is sitting in the office,” she said.
Electronic records store valuable patient history, Dailey said, but it’s important to focus on the patients while they are in the exam room. “You learn a lot by looking at them,” she said.
Dailey also revived the practice of making house calls for her patients who are age 85 and older and housebound. If they require a wheelchair van or ambulance to get to her, she goes to them.
Growing up in a suburb of Youngstown, Dailey was drawn to medicine in the eighth grade after hearing a presentation by a missionary ophthalmologist from Pakistan. She also spent the summer of her freshman year at The College of Wooster working at an Ethiopian medical clinic.
She earned her medical degree from the Ohio State University College of Medicine and completed her residency at Grant Medical Center. Her path to Nashville started by meeting nurse anesthetist Thelma Lang from Holmes County while in medical school. Lang most likely was the reason Dailey received a call “out of the blue” from a Holmes County doctor she didn’t know at the time.
Dailey said Dr. Charles Hart made this offer: “If you come to Holmes County, you can be my partner.”
Having attended The College of Wooster, Dailey knew the location of Holmes County but had not really spent time there. She decided to come for a rural residency in Hart’s group, which included two other physicians, Drs. Robert Houston and Luther High.
“I was the young resident right out of school, and these were significantly older men,” Dailey said, but she found her place among them and never experienced any discrimination. When the group broke up in 1993, Hart practiced for a while with his son, Dr. Robert “Andy” Hart, who is retiring in June from Holmes Family Practice Center in Millersburg.
Dailey practiced in branch offices in Nashville and Shreve before eventually establishing her own medical clinic in Nashville.
Dailey ordered the first Life Flight for a Holmes County patient. The patient had heart disease, Dailey said, and was brought to Joel Pomerene Hospital’s emergency department, where his heart stopped seven times. “I told him we need to get you out of here. You need a cardiologist,” she said.
Dailey said the man survived, and the Life Flight transport captured media attention.
Another memorable case for Dailey was an Amish carpenter who cut part of his hand off with a saw. His only option at the hospital was to have a surgeon suture the hand shut; however, he would lose the use of his right hand. Dailey had him transported by ambulance to an Akron hand specialist who was able to reattach the hand, allowing the man to fully regain the use of it.
During a chance meeting with him years later, the man thanked Dailey for saving his livelihood, she said, and told her, “You decided it was worth trying to put my hand back on and found a way to do that.”
A thank you also came years later from a 14-year-old who came to her wanting an excuse to not participate in gym because of the headaches he was experiencing. Dailey transferred him to Akron Children’s Hospital, where doctors discovered abscesses under his skull and on his brain as a result of an infection.
Doctors cleared the abscesses, she said, and years later he approached Dailey saying, “I’m that kid you sent to the hospital with the brain abscesses.”
Those are just a few of the many memorable moments that fill Dailey’s files. Even after switching to electronic files, she has maintained paper files and has been dispersing them as patients move on.
Looking forward to a fresh start herself, Dailey plans to do volunteer work and travel to visit her two sons’ families. Son Jesse works in education, and son Joshua is an attorney. She also plans to take more advantage of the season pass she’s had at Snow Trails in Mansfield for the past 35 years.