Dr. Tony McDowell never strayed too far from his Edna roots, venturing only as far as Texas A&M, the University of Texas Medical Branch, and Scott & White Hospital for residency before entering practice as an obstetrician and gynecologist in Victoria nearly 31 years ago.
Now he’s returned home to close out his career as the first gynecologist on staff at the Jackson County Medical Clinic, and possibly the first gynecologist to practice in the county.
McDowell is certified by
see JCMC’S FIRST GYNECOLOGIST on page A9 and a Fellow in the American Board of OB/GYN, and a member of the Victoria County Medical Society, the Texas Medical Association, the American Medical Association, and a Fellow in the Texas Association of OB/GYN, with affiliations at DeTar Hospital, Citizens Medical Center, and Cuero Community Hospital.
At the Jackson County Medical Clinic, McDowell won’t be offering obstetrics care and delivering babies but instead focusing on gynecologic care and women’s health with office appointments available every weekday except Wednesdays, which will be kept open for surgeries at one of the Victoria hospitals.
Jackson County Medical Clinic Manager Danette Bethany said she thought that while the clinic offered the community a variety of family medicine and pediatrics providers, it lacked someone specializing in women’s health.
“Not that we didn’t provide it, just not that (as a) specialty,” Bethany said. “So, Dr. McDowell was interested in kind of slowing down and not doing OB anymore. He was interested in doing women’s health only and GYN services, and we were the ones he picked.”
That choice was easy, he said.
His wife, Sherri, is the daughter of longtime Jackson County physician Dr. Walter Konzen, McDowell’s family ranch is nearby, and his brotherin- law, Lance Smiga, is the CEO/Administrator of the hospital district.
“I would have lived here a long time ago because I love it here,” McDowell said, explaining that he would have to be within 20 minutes of the hospital in order to get there quickly when needed. “Once I decided to stop delivering babies it was the perfect opportunity to come back home (to Edna). If I was delivering babies, I’d have to spend the night at the hospital and never come home. It can’t be done if you’re doing obstetrics.”
Even living in Inez was too many minutes out, he said.
“When they call you, the baby’s down,” he said. “You’ve got not very long to get the baby out. But GYN is 8-to-5 and scheduled.”
Moving away from delivering babies not only will give McDowell regular working hours but also will offer his patients a much shorter wait time to get an appointment and then to be seen in clinic. When he was doing both, McDowell said he would often find himself driving from the office to DeTar or Citizens to deliver a baby, spend an hour on the required paperwork afterward, then drive back across town to the office where patients were waiting to be seen.
“I don’t think the medicine is that much different,” McDowell said. “Gynecology is not different. It’s just not having all the OB in between that affects not only my life and my family’s life, but my patients’ lives. You can’t control it.”
Being able to add a physician of McDowell’s experience should expand and continue to strengthen the scope and quality of patient care, Smiga and Bethany said.
“I just think it opens up a whole new slice of medical services that we can now provide,” Smiga said. “Women’s health is greatly important, and before, we would have to see a patient and then refer them over to Victoria. We can now provide those services here, so I think for the female population it’s a great win to be able to do it right here at home.”
Some of the services he’ll be able to offer under the umbrella of gynecologic care would include pap smears, wellness checkups, bladder issues, hormone therapy, and surgeries, which would be scheduled at either DeTar or Citizens, Bethany said, since the clinic and hospital are not equipped for surgery.
“I think most women like a specialist to do (pap smears and exams) and not necessarily a family practice where you go for your colds and your hypertension. Bethany said. “They like those kind of separated so it’s helped to bring (a specialist) here.”
Some of McDowell’s longtime patients have already followed him to Edna, and he’s gaining new patients who already relied on the local clinic, she said.
“The first day he was being booked,” she said. “I think what they’re going to find here is, since he’s not doing the OB, that they’ll be able to get in sooner, so if it was like months for a wait over there, it’s not here. It’s like a couple of weeks.”
That’s where the Jackson County clinic has an advantage over large practices that offer obstetrics, Smiga said.
“I think that’s where we can be different,” Smiga said. “My hope is, yes, his schedule fills up and he stays extremely busy. But it’s not going to be as busy as it was at the Women’s Clinic, so hopefully we can get you in faster. When you arrive for your appointment, we can get you in and out of here faster and you can get on about your day.
“He’s excited, we’re excited, and it makes me happy to walk in the clinic and see a whole new population sitting there.”
Smiga said that McDowell asked him if the Jackson County Hospital District would benefit from having a gynecologist on staff.
“As we dug into it a little deeper, it seemed to make a whole lot of sense, so I asked the clinic director to run numbers, we asked around in the public to gauge their interest level, and when I sat down and talked to the board it really seemed like it would be a win-win for everybody,” Smiga said. “I think it allows him to do what he was wanting to do and just focus on this side of the business, it gives us a new service, and at the end of the day, we’re serving the public. On all sides of this equation, I think everybody wins.”
McDowell said he hopes to bring good gynecologic care and surgery options to patients at the clinic, which could also benefit the hospital district in the form of a greater number of women staying in town for mammograms, ultrasounds, and lab work.
“(Smiga) kind of did me a favor by offering me a spot to do what I want to do, and I hope my presence here will help,” McDowell said. “I didn’t come over here (just) to benefit him, I came over here to benefit the town and the clinic, and in the long run, that will benefit him if I’m an asset.
“I’ve come back to all my family and friends and close to the ranch. I think it’s a win-win. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do, but I just couldn’t do it with obstetrics.”
Patients should benefit from McDowell’s experience gathered over three decades of practice, she said.
“He definitely is super smart, very confident in his work, which I appreciate,” Bethany said. “He’s a great resource to these other providers.”
Funny thing is, that’s a resource that might not have happened if his calf roping skills had been better, McDowell noted.
“I really wanted to be a great cowboy, but I just wasn’t that good,” he said with a laugh, recalling that after his father died when he was young, a man named Rusty Carroll took him under his wing and helped raise him, including having McDowell help around the ranch.
“I’d get out of school about 3:20 and I’d get home, have a Coke, kind of sit back and relax before I’d go rope,” he said. “I started watching M*A*S*H and I thought, you know, they look like they’re having a good time.”
About the same time, he began dating Sherri, started noticing what her father, Dr. Konzen, actually did, and became interested in medicine.
“The more I got into it, the more I liked it,” McDowell said. “There comes a point where you’re committed. If M*A*S*H wasn’t on and I dated somebody else, would I have really been a doctor? I don’t know.
“If I was a great calf roper, no, I’d have a big buckle and I’d be world champion and y’all would all know my name. But that did not happen. It’s worked out perfectly. What you want early in life you don’t always get.”
He and Sherri have four children and eight grandchildren, with another on the way. Son Everard works at the Port of Houston; Anthony is a gynecologic oncologist at Baylor Scott & White Hospital in Temple; Sarah is a medical equipment sales representative in San Marcos; and Thomas is an Army reservist now living in Victoria.
