The Only Doctor

It’s hard to fathom that in one of the richest countries on earth, there are still pockets of America with no hospitals and virtually no qualified physicians. Yet that’s the reality poignantly captured in “The Only Doctor”, a profile from Reel South and PBS of Dr. Karen Kinsell, who operates the lone medical clinic in impoverished, rural Clay County, Georgia. Over three years, Atlanta-based documentarian Matthew Hashiguchi traveled to Clay County to film Dr. Kinsell caring for scores of patients who often lack insurance or other means to pay, yet whom she cheerfully treats anyway, doling out non-judgmental lifestyle advice along with sorely needed procedures and medicines. What starts as a tale of professional devotion—mixed with touching personal stories of Kinsell’s Midwestern upbringing and late-in-life marriage—then turns into a stark indictment of America’s increasingly profit-driven health care system. A huge university medical center suddenly promises to open a new facility in Clay County—but refuses to hire Dr. Kinsell and threatens to drive her clinic out of business because she insists on continuing to see indigent locals. For a portrait of America’s health care inequities so powerful it’s now taught in medical schools as inspiration to young doctors to work in underserved communities, “The Only Doctor” win a Peabody Award.