Maggie McKay: Many people consider their family physician a part of their family because they go through life's ups and downs right along with them. Let's meet Dr. Jeffrey Hawtof, family physician and director of Provider IT and Medical Education at Beebe Healthcare, to talk about what it's like to serve in his role and more.

Welcome to the BV Healthcare Podcast. I'm Maggie McKay. Dr. Hawtof, thank you so much for making the time to be here. To begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. So I'm Jeff Hawtof. I have been a practicing family physician for almost 25 years now here in the Sussex County area. So very exciting. My wife, who's a local pediatrician as well. Her and I came to this area back in the late nineties to really be able to practice full scope medicine that we wanted to practice.

It was wonderful. We were so glad to join this area. We actually wanted specifically a smaller town feel so we could really be involved in all of the aspects of the community which is what we've loved throughout the year. Boy in the last 25 years has it grown. but we have, had great enjoyment of it all. I've had three children. All three of my kids have been born at BV Hospital. I actually got to deliver one of my children at BV Hospital, I'm also, not only am I a family physician I've been here, as I said for 25 years, but I'm also the director of provider IT, which basically means I'm a complete computer geek, total nerd. But I can talk computer talk and I can talk. Doctor talk. So when it comes to using computers and doctors, they use me to kind of translate between the two of them. But I'm also the medical Director of medical education. One of my loves is teaching. As a physician, I teach my patients all the time.

Well, I also love to teach nurse practitioners, students medical students. And we actually have a, starting a brand new residency program coming up that I'm involved in and helping to start that program and get the teaching off the ground. So, love to do all that too.

Maggie McKay: How exciting. You have three hats, at least. How do you balance it all, professional and person?

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: Well, it's easy. I've actually in a sense downsized what I do. I used to be the chief medical Officer here at Beebe Healthcare. And that, responsibility was even greater. So see this as actually an easier role for me, compared to that administrative role. So that actually got better, but. It is hard to figure out that life balance, isn't it? I mean, we all do it. I think everybody is trying to figure out how to live life. I think if you find the job you love to do it's not a balance between your job and your family. It's just who you are.

I Always say I can't imagine ever being anything else but a doctor I love. To see patients. When I used to be the chief medical officer, I used to only see patients at like two half days a week. And I used to consider those my downtime. That was the best time of my week. Because having to deal with all the administrative hassles of healthcare, which is a lot that was tough.

But when you got and sit in front of patients, that's what I was born to do. And just to be able to do that and love doing that was awesome. So to me it's not hard to find that balance. The other thing that I think most physicians really need is really good family support. If your family also supports it now, it's easy because my wife's also a physician, so she totally understands the stuff that I'm going through.

I understand what she's going through. And our kids have been great about it too. We've been lucky because whenever my kid was having an issue, always one of us could kind of take the charge while the other one was trying to deal with other stuff. And we were lucky, we were able to figure out how to do that, be a part of their lives, and not consider our jobs a job, but really just we're here to help other people. We were able to that onto our children, work hard, help others, and that's how you live your life.

Maggie McKay: What makes Beebee such a special place to work? Because you've been there a long time, obviously you love it.

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: Yeah. Beebes Been phenomenal. I've worked in lots of places. I've actually owned my own practice before. It's very difficult to find a place where you feel like you matter and you belong. Beebe listens to their providers, listens to their staff. It allows me and my staff to feel like if something needs to get changed, we can change it. We can make things for the better. In the core, BeeBe believes in the community. And that's really what makes a difference. So I'm a part of that community, my staff, our children, everyone. Are part of this community, because that is the core, the foundation, that it's patient centered and that's the foundation of it.

Everything makes sense from there, right? If you're gonna make a decision, does it make sense for the patient first, and then you fill in all the pieces around it? And Beebe's been able to do that. We're not answering to a big corporate entity that's somewhere else, that's looking for stock margins or only about profit, you truly believe that BeeBe is interested in the community in making sure that the people in this community are well cared for.

Maggie McKay: And you mentioned you can't imagine being anything other than what you are now and what you. But what was your very, very first job, like high school, college. And what did you learn from it?

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: My very first job, I started working at a really young age. So, I worked for my father. He actually owned a little five and dime store, and so I was a stock boy from the age of six on. Which is how I got my first hernia. I was lifting the boxes and putting them away. I did custom framing at his store. He actually developed and I actually did, got a chance to be creative and do custom framing work at the cash register. I worked as at a commissary, washing dishes at truckloads of dishes. Came across one summer I, a few summers. I did tennis court maintenance and literally steamrolled tennis courts.

Clay tennis courts and had to water them and steamroll 'em. So, lots of fun stuff. I just like to kind of get out and see people and do things. So my biggest fun stuff that I used to do though was computers. I used build them. I used to fix them for other people and things like that. So what I learned about that. I learned how to work with people. Too often I, I think if you're headstrong into one lane, if you put the blinders on, you're not seeing what's around you. You don't get a chance to really understand people, very well.

Being in the service industry and being in customer service and other stuff that you really get a chance to realize that people's complaints are real. And you have to take each one seriously. sometimes in medicine, the only thing that matters is the person going to live or not. If they are okay, everything will be fine, but to that person sitting in front of you, whatever their problem is the most important thing in the world to them right then and there, and you have to treat it as such.

Maggie McKay: And speaking of that, how do you deal with having to deliver bad news?

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: Oh, that's tough. That takes a while. In fact, I'll still say after, even after 25, 30 years of, doing this, I'm still perfecting that. That's not easy to do. but I think the difference between a family physician and other physicians is, is that you help people through all their life cycles. And one very important life cycle is that process of dying. And it's a scary, and it's a hard time. You're not just helping the patient, you're also helping their family.

And so as a family physician, we, teach, you know, as we're going into our residency program that I'm gonna be starting, we teach them how to have those conversations and it's not easy. In fact, I'd say at this point in my career, I feel comfortable doing it. I don't feel comfortable at the time, but I'm okay just walking in and doing it. The harder part is in a busy office, you've just spent 45 minutes with a family kind of going over some things that maybe they've, recently been diagnosed with an awful disease.

They're gonna need to go in hospice. You've talked to them, talked to the family. You've kind of counseled them. You walk out of the room. Emotionally just drained. It could be a patient I've cared for for 20 years, and you've gotta walk into the next room in the next minute with a complete smile on your face as if nothing was wrong. That's one of the hardest things in medicine to do. That's hard.

Maggie McKay: That must be, that's probably something patients never think about. That you could have just been in the room next door delivering. , that kind of news. Well, since you started in medicine, Dr. Hotta, what has changed? What have you noticed? Like what's the biggest change in medicine and what are your hopes for the future, especially in your expertise?

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: So you're talking to someone who actually likes change. I don't like things, don't like the status quo. I don't care for things just constantly being the same. So actually, don't enjoy change for the sake of change. I always think that every process can get better. So I look at it as, I'm not worried about change. With change for the better, I think we've become, More of a partnership in medicine, right? Patients and physicians have become partners.

The shared care models of medicine. Being able to, work with a patient and, just talk about what do you think is going on, what I think is going on, these are the options. Which one interests you the most? Let's try this, that, or the other, as opposed to just saying, okay, you have this. Here's what you should do. Call me, you know, if this works or doesn't work, and have really no discussion on it, like it, it used to be 20, 30, 40 years ago. that change is phenomenal.

Changes I don't care for more and more insurance intrusions, the prior authorizations that we have to go through, it's the stuff of medicine that prevents me from spending time just looking at that patient and caring for that person. And instead I've got to do these 27,000 other clicks and things like that and I know you need this test. How can I convince your insurance company you need? It shouldn't be something that I'm spending an hour on outta my day to try and figure out for every patient those things are very frustrating and maddening to I think all physicians.

So the part I like to change is what kind of workflows can we incorporate in our office to minimize those disruptions in care? So that's, I like to constantly look at how to improve my nurse's care, how to improve my patient's experience through the office visit. How do we not end up an hour behind, how can we be more efficient as a practice? Things like that are fun.

Maggie McKay: Was there any life event that inspired your career choice, or did you always know you wanted to go into medicine?

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: I had no clue. I graduated from the University of Delaware in the School of Electoral Engineering as a computer scientist. I got out, I was working at the University of Maryland Cancer Center at the time developing software for them. So, they designed some amazing research protocols. They had a brilliant mathematician that helped design cancer drugs in a very, in a way that actually saved many people's lives. But he didn't know how to use software program. I was the programmer who couldn't think as brilliant as this man. So they hired me to program it and it worked. And, so I started going on rounds with the oncologist and doings research with them.

And over that, honestly, four, actually it was a year and a half, got a chance to really say, wow, I think I'd be disappointed if I just didn't try to go to medical school. And so I, go to medical school thinking, all right, I'm gonna be some kind of radiologist inventing some new radiology procedure that does 3D imaging. Back then there wasn't really much 3D imaging and how can we do this really cool stuff? And as I'm going through medical school and training, I go through my rotation in pediatrics. I'm, oh, I love peace. This is fun.

And then I do my obstetrics. Oh, I love delivering babies. This is fun. I do my trauma rotation and surgery rotation and medicine rotation and family practice. And I'm realizing I like all of it. Hey, that's a family doc and sure enough, that's exactly what it was. That's what I ended up choosing family physician.

Maggie McKay: So early on when you were in med school, was there ever a day when you thought, oh, this is not for me, and almost threw in the towel? Were you ever discouraged?

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you get those, especially early in med school, the first two years are pretty much just bookwork. It's, coursework, when you've gotta memorize, you have to memorize all of the medicines that are out there in a matter of just, six months or three months or whatever it was back then. it's tough. It was hard. but. We did it, actually, it clicked. Eventually you kind of drugged your way through it. You stayed up till midnight study in you, what was comforting was everyone else was in the same boat. Everyone in the school was, God, this stuff's all hard, what are we gonna do?

And we all kind of get through it. and then your second two years of medical school, way after you got all the bookwork and you get to apply it and learn it how it interacts with patients, that's where you fall in love with it. That's where you're like, okay, now this all makes sense. Oh, now I understand why we said don't do this and do this, and then you start to put it all together and stuff like that. It is absolutely very hard at times, but also incredibly rewarding.

Maggie McKay: So you have great energy, a lot of enthusiasm. What are your outside interests and passions? You must do things that make you really happy as well as work on the outside. What do you do?

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: Number one family, right? I love my family, so spending time with my kids all growing up and now that they're grownups, Just kind of living vicariously through their lives and staying in touch with them. We love to camp, hike. My wife and I started camping before my first one was born, and when my first one was born, we started camping every summer from the time they were six months old on. And so just a tent camping? And they loved it. they love to still go. Even actually, we're right now designing our vacation. Where are we going camping this year? So we're super excited. They're great when it comes to that kind of stuff.

Maggie McKay: That's awesome.

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: I love to do things like, I, I love to sing, play guitar. I teach music at our temple. do kind of stuff like that. I, read books. I love science fiction. So science fiction, fantasy novels, read. I love reading those kind of books. Sports, if it's a sport, I'll play it. So just love to get involved in that if did that in high school and stuff like that. But I just love to do that. And yes, even corn hole is a sport and I do love playing corn hole now too, as my joints are starting to hurt a little bit, so I can't do some of the other stuff.

Love biking, big into biking. So, love all that stuff. But mostly spending time with family, playing games with my family, laughing and just getting silly with the family, traveling with my that kind of stuff.

Maggie McKay: Mm-hmm, you do not look old enough, but any grandkids yet?

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: No, not yet. Not yet. My oldest is getting married this year, so very excited. So, she is marrying a wonderful gentleman and, very excited, very much approved. And, this is gonna be an interesting year.

Maggie McKay: So you'll be a father-in-law. You'll have another title another hat.

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: Another hat. Oh my goodness. I didn't think about the father-in-law hat. don't Like the word father-in-law. We'll use something else. I'll figure that out later.

Maggie McKay: Come up with, and then when you're a grandpa, you have to come up with a name for that.

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: Oh, that'll be a little while longer.

Maggie McKay: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We won't rush it. Dr. Hawtof, what do you think med students are up against these days that you didn't have to contend with?

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: The business has changed. When I was in going out of, leaving my, medical school and going into residencies, you typically went, you opened your own practice. Now most people coming out of residencies are moving into an established practices, and that's difficult. You're very much protected as a student, so smartly so, in the training of a resident and a student, you have what's called protected hours, which means back in my days, we used to work 36 hours straight, 12 hours off, 36 hours. I mean, just I mean, you worked, you worked, you worked, you worked.

I know it sounds awful. I loved it. Again, it was you've got to be with patients all the time and you have to learn each day. It's a learning experience. , but at the same time, it's exhausting, It, it can be very tiring. So, they smartly went ahead and said, okay, no, there's certain hours after so many hours, you need so many hours rest. So, it's very strict now, with all that protection once you leave residency, you're back to, all right, we've got a lot of people and we gotta get seen. And you gotta keep seeing patients. we're in a huge physician shortage area, right?

In fact, it's becoming, most of this country is a huge physician shortage area. Who are these people going to see if it's not us? So if we don't figure out ways to. see patients yet still fit it within our lifestyle, it's gonna be more and more difficult for people to get care. There's just gonna be less and less physicians to do that. And that's sad, but that's been the truth now for 20 years and it's been getting worse over those 20 years. So, my concern for my medical students coming out is that hopefully they have that realization that the work is gonna be a lot harder when you're out there on your own and doing stuff than you did it as a med student or a resident.

Maggie McKay: Mm-hmm. And on a lighter note, do you have a guilty pleasure, like when it comes to food or TV or?

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: Oh my goodness. Guilty pleasures, Big Bang Theory, love reruns to that. My wife gets sick of me watching the same episodes over and ever again.

Maggie McKay: I bet.

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: Anything, science fiction, fantasy. So again, so I love that kind of stuff. food-wise, love to make my own pizza.

Maggie McKay: Oh, what do you put on it?

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: Oh, gosh, you name it, it can be anything. I do a very good, I take olive oil that has a slight habanero. , infusion into the olive oil. Just brush it onto the dough initially. Homemade dough, by the way, nothing frozen. Great sauce I put together. All right. Homemade sauce. It's a mixture of tomatoes, olive oils, and seasonings. And then I love doing olives, mushrooms, fresh spinach leaves, and sometimes I'll do onions and green peppers. But most time, no. And then just, oh my goodness. And a blend of cheeses. Not one cheese. You gotta do the right blend. This was my Covid project. Yeah. This was my Covid project. I learned how to make pizza.

Maggie McKay: Have you tried making cauliflower crust?

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: I have not made cauliflower crusts because honestly, I've never had one. I will Try. If you have a good sample, one I, you can email me, please let me know what it is because I haven't had one I've liked.

Maggie McKay: Do you have, I think it's called 600 degrees, where you kind of make your own pizza? It's like a chain. Do you have that there? They have some good cauliflower crust. I don't make it. No, I'm not, good in the kitchen. But if you ever travel and you see a 600 degrees or maybe it's 800 degrees, the cauliflower crust is pretty good, Dr. Hawtof.

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: I will try it.

Maggie McKay: okay. you have a mantra or a philosophy in life?

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: Yeah, so two things, so I do a lot of teaching as well. I teach a leadership academy to physicians and things like that. And there's two mantras I always do, first of all, and most people know, that it's, seek first, understand, then to be understood. That will prevent more arguments in your life than you will ever realize. It's just sometimes people just want to get things off their chest and say it and get it out there. So if you let people do that and then you try to understand where they're coming from, you'll more likely to be understood on your side of things. So that's love that one. The other one, it' s not the destination, but the journey that matters.

Too much times we stress about something happening exactly a certain way and we can't, it's not about it happening the at specific way. It's about getting there that matters. Don't stress about things being exact, just get to the end and enjoy the journey.

Maggie McKay: I'm so with you on that. I always say, don't worry until you have to because it's wasted energy. Right.

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: Yeah, same idea.

Maggie McKay: Well, it's been so much fun getting to know you, Dr. Hawtof. I know you're busy because you have all those different titles and all these things to do. But thank you so much for your time and telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do at Beebe Healthcare. If someone would like to find out more or make an appointment with you, where would they go?

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: www.beebehealthcare.org.

Maggie McKay: That's awesome. Thank you so much and good luck with that wedding and being a father-in-law.

Jeffrey Hawtof, MD: Thank you so much. You have a good one.

Maggie McKay: You too. Again, that's Dr. Jeffrey Hawtof and to find out more, as he said, go to beebehealthcare.org. That's B E E B E healthcare.org. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and check out our entire podcast library For topics of interest to you. Thank you for joining us. I'm Maggie McKay.