Dr. Gary McColloch always thought one day he’d go into medicine. But when he started medical school at 31 years old, he had already been an infantry officer in the United States Army for four years before realizing his time had come.
“I thought about it several times,” McColloch said. “But the timing was never right.”
The Auburn University graduate would go to the University of South Alabama for medical school and then complete his residency at the University at Birmingham in Montgomery.
“I did my residency at this large practice in Montgomery. You would work with patients, but you couldn’t develop relationships with them. You couldn’t really get to know them and what they need,” McColloch said.
Then in 1995, timing changed again and an opportunity to open Eclectic Family Care came. The doors opened in November of 1995 and McColloch and his staff have been serving three or four generations of the same families since.
“I’ve really enjoyed the last 26 years or so and I have no plans to retire anytime soon,” McColloch said. “There have been a lot of changes in medicine over the years. The relationships with patients make it worth it all. It’s more of a calling than a practice. In a small town like this, you can’t go anywhere without seeing your patients.”
McColloch and his staff see around 50 patients a day in the office between normal business hours. But McColloch stands by the fact that it is not an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. sort of job.
“It’s not the typical 8 – 5 job, it’s not. It’s 24/7,” McColloch said. “It’s more than a job. It’s a calling of sorts. You have to really want to help people. There’s an art to it.”
And his patients vary in age from two years old to patients in their 70s or 80s.
“I enjoy working with the young kids,” McColloch said. “There have been times when I am seeing a child and I look at their mother and I realize that she was that age when I first started seeing her. It’s great. When I first started the practice, there wasn’t a pediatrician in Elmore County. I saw a lot of babies and did a lot well baby visits.”
Practicing medicine doesn’t come without its challenges though. McColloch must stay up to date on new advancements in medicine, procedures, diseases and treatments. To help stay in the know, he must complete 100 hours of continuing medical education (CME) training a year. He also gets recertified by medical boards every seven years.
But learning new approaches to medicine isn’t the hardest part. Neither is the new technology and computer driven medicine, nor the advocating to insurance companies on his patient’s behalf. The hardest part is losing a patient.
“You get to know people and their families through the years. Parting with patients is the hardest part,” McColloch said. “But the best part is helping patients because you want to. I want to be able to serve the community and provide good medical care that preserves the dignity of patients.”
When McColloch isn’t serving the community by seeing patients at Eclectic Family Care, he is serving the community by being active in Providence Primitive Baptist Church. He also enjoys spending time with his family and describes his family as “really family oriented.”
McColloch and his wife have four children, five grandchildren and one grandchild on the way.
“I just recently found out that we have another grandchild on the way,” McColloch said. “We’re excited. I enjoy spending my time outside the office with my children and grandchildren.”
Eclectic Family Care is described as a “comprehensive family medical practice” and is located at 575 Claud Road in Eclectic. McCulloch and Teresa "Tesa" Hodge, PA-C, see patients at the office from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 7:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Friday.
