Dr. Andrea Neita is her own boss in osteopathic medicine

Dr. Andrea Neita has never truly been one to fit in as a cog in a wheel.

After all, she took a four-year break during her medical career to spend time with her daughter, then jumped back into the field to learn that it already had changed.

The native of Bronx, N.Y., also took a winding path in her career, having come to Columbus to work with an internist before taking a physician’s position with Valley Healthcare in south Columbus, then moving to American Family Care on Gateway Road.

Earlier this year, she finally took her father’s advice, and that was to set out on her own. Neita took a leap of faith and launched her own private general practice near Midtown Medical Center, where she treats young and old using osteopathic medicine. It’s called Pinnacle Family Medicine.

“Like I tell people, I’m a simple country doctor,” she said.

It was at Neita’s 1905 7th Ave. office that the Ledger-Enquirer visited with the Columbus resident recently to discuss her job and the unique path she has taken. This interview is edited a bit for length and clarity.

Q. Can you describe the break you took early in your medical career?

I graduated from medical school in 1999, and I was a new mother at the time. I had an infant and decided you really cannot serve two masters. So I took time off from my training and became a domestic goddess. I took four years. When I went back it was like I had stepped into the river and the river had changed drastically. I had to go, OK, put on your waders and let’s get this done. That’s when we started having more evidence-based medicine.

When I first started medical school we trained like, this is what this is and this is how you do this. Now the evidence says this and you need to pick the best features for this particular patient. We no longer use a cookie-cutter approach. It is targeting your treatment more to that individual.

Q. Which will hopefully bring better outcomes?

A. Exactly.

Q. You’ve been in Columbus a decade?

A. I’ve been in Columbus now 10 years. I graduated from residency in 2006, and I came down here to work with Dr. Howard Willis. He’s an internist in Columbus ... I knew I wanted to come south. I grew up in New York, and had been there and done that. And my daughter was a lot younger at the time, obviously, and I wanted something different for her.

Q. What was your job with Dr. Willis?

A. I was a physician fresh out of residency, and he was an established practice in town, and kind of took me under his wing. He’s still practicing.

Q. And you also have been with American Family Care on Gateway Road?

A. That was the last position I worked before I came here. I decided to jump ship and do what my father told me to do.

Q. Which was what?

A. Don’t work for anybody.

Q. That can be hard?

A. It is. But, you know, ‘He who does not hear will feel’ was the saying when I was growing up. And I just did not listen to his advice when I should have.

Q. Some people aren’t cut out to run a business?

A. That’s true. I actually had the benefit from my friends I had met in medical school and others I met in residency who made that foray (into business) ahead of me, and the pitfalls that they fell into. And I guess that made me cringe a little bit … The reason I went to medical school was to be able to help people. But I expected some return for myself, some autonomy, and it was not happening.

Q. You wanted financial security?

A. Hopefully, yes.

Q. You worked somewhere else between Dr. Willis and American Family Care?

A. I was at Valley Healthcare, which is on the south side. I was there for three years.

Q. How long have you been open here?

A. Since May.

Q. What was your decision process. What did it take to do this?

A. Financing. I know the job as a physician. Now I’m learning the job as a business owner. Chalk and cheese. I was talking to a cousin and he said you’re not going to question what you know as a physician, but you’ll question what you know as a business owner, because when I went to medical school they weren’t training us to do this. They trained us to be cogs in a wheel, and I thought that was what I was going to be, a cog in a wheel ... until I was the cog and I wasn’t liking it.

Q. Medical schools now prepare students for business?

A. I think these days they are. They touch on it. They teach them about how to run a business. When I went to medical school, they didn’t even teach us how to code, and that is the bread and butter of your existence. Because if you don’t code properly, you get nothing. So things are changing on that end.

Q. How else are things changing?

A. Going into private practice, I’m also now in the middle of another upheaval with the Affordable Care Act and all of that. The payment structure has changed, everything has changed. Which is why you read sometimes about people retiring or leaving medicine or what have you, because it has gotten tougher.

Q. So going it alone, in a sense, isn’t easy?

A. It’s a tremendous leap of faith. That’s exactly what it is, completely. As a physician, the way I see my job, it’s to help you become the best that you can be. That’s what my motto is. It’s bringing you to the pinnacle of your best health, and that implies that everyone’s pinnacle is not going to be the same. As a mountain range has different levels, that’s the way it is with people.

Q. I’ve heard there’s a doctor shortage, but there’s no shortage of people needing a doctor here in Columbus?

A. There is a shortage of doctors. But in a town like Columbus there isn’t because it is the second-largest city in the state of Georgia, and you have a concentration of doctors here. I have a friend who’s out in the country, and I think she serves eight counties because the old doctors have retired, and people are just inundating her.

Q. Do you see all ages and demographics?

A. I’m a family physician. I used to say I’m cradle to grave and before you’re born. I no longer do labor and delivery or those issues. At least in New York, it was really litigious and I didn’t want to have that type of stress here.

Q. What’s an average day like for you?

A. When I was at American Family and with Dr. Willis, it was health maintenance, disease processes and so on. At American Family Care they wanted to have a family practice kind of setting, as well as urgent care. So I would manage diabetes, COPD and everything like that, in addition to fractures, lacerations and that kind of thing. That’s what a family physician does. We do everything.

Q. Is that variety what you like about your job and the osteopathic approach?

A. Yes. I like the variety. The thing about it is when you have patients who are well managed, it’s not all that hard, as long as you and your patient get to an understanding as to what our goals are in treatment and why I’m asking you to do what I ask.

There’s a paternalistic philosophy in medicine, which is the older kind of school, which is ‘Here, take this and see me in the morning.’ I don’t practice that way. I talk to my patients, and I think that’s one of the things that people like. I give you the chance to tell me what is wrong, and when I’ve gotten the list of things that are wrong, I’m going to prioritize them. What I tell patients is I prioritize things that will kill you or cause mortality first ... then the things that make you unhappy, and the basics after that, the maintenance things to improve where we can.

I try to work within everybody’s limits. I’m not going to tell a 450-pound man to go run around the track. I’m going to tell you I need you to be more active, and I give you a plan for a specific period of time, and then we’ll come back and assess if we need to tweak this or that, or adjust your medication as needed.

Q. Any other interesting things about your job or career?

A. I was a locum tenens physician once. It’s a traveling doctor. I worked for an insurance company, and basically was looking over the shoulders of the providers whose patients they have. It was usually Medicare patients. So I would go to the patients’ homes, see how they are living, are they taking their meds. It was eye opening. I went to one home and the husband brought me a tray with 30 medications on it. His poor wife was taking 30 different pills a day. It’s mind-boggling.

Q. One medication can cause a symptom that needs to be addressed with another medicine?

A. Exactly. She was having medications to treat side effects of other medications. I asked, ‘Does your doctor know you’re taking all of these prescriptions?’ I don’t think they ever asked her about it. The thing is when patients go to several providers, (the various doctors) prescribe all kinds of things.

Q. Finally, what’s the most rewarding thing you get out of your work?

A. Seeing patients, or having them report to me, that I was able to change their quality of life for the better.

I had (a guy with) congestive heart failure. Basically the heart function is less than optimal, so they tend to have fluid collecting in their lungs, lower extremities, abdomen, and it impairs their exercise tolerance. One person was senior at his position, so he had all the young guys doing whatever and he would just supervise. He said one day they called him to do something upstairs, and he just walked up the stairs, and when he got to the top he was like, I can breathe. He could bend over and do whatever he needs to do. That was after I started taking care of him. So he no longer has to sit there and have people do everything. He’s now more physically active.

This story was originally published October 29, 2016 at 9:17 PM with the headline "Dr. Andrea Neita is her own boss in osteopathic medicine."