LAKE COUNTY — Were it not for the COVID-19 pandemic, family and emergency physician Erik McLaughlin, MD, MPH, his wife and twin kids would have packed up their car and driven some 10 to 12 hours from their Las Vegas home to visit Lake County. McLaughlin is eager to “see in person and connect with” the various communities and citizens that he will be serving in his new role as Lake’s top health official. A yearlong nationwide recruitment search ended on Feb. 15, 2022, when the Board of Supervisors appointed him as the county’s public health officer (PHO). McLaughlin is expected to allocate 80% of his time or 32 hours per week to his Lake County responsibilities.
For now, the adventure-loving McLaughlin family has to make do with looking at photos of Clear Lake and its surroundings, websites and the area’s biking/hiking trail maps. “Usually, before I take a role, I go to the site, travel and see the location,” McLaughlin said, in a phone interview. “I look forward to that chance when I can safely do that. If it were a different time, I would be up there dragging fish out of the lake. Our visit would depend on the tempo of the disease.”
McLaughlin, 47, is Lake’s fifth PHO in as many years. He replaces Dr. Gary Pace who resigned in April 2021, after serving in the position for almost two years. Pace and two other physicians, Dr. Charlie Evans and Dr. Evan Bloom, took turns alternating as Lake’s acting PHO in the past year. McLaughlin is not surprised to hear of the high turnover of medical professionals in rural areas, saying, “In 2018, I gave a presentation on turnovers. Rural medicine tends to have a high turnover rate. People may have great qualifications but may not like the area. It is more challenging to recruit for rural communities. It takes a unique breed to want to be in rural medicine.”
County officials are hopeful that McLaughlin can start his new job by March 1, pending approval of his medical license in California. So is he. To date, he’s licensed to practice medicine in eight states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah, as well as Australia. He expects to get his California license soon. “There are alumni from my university practicing in California,” said McLaughlin, who received his medical degree from St. Christopher’s College of Medicine in Dakar, Senegal, and his master’s degree in public health from Tulane School of Public Health in New Orleans, both in 2005. “I started going through California’s licensing process some time back. The process may take three to five months. It’s arduous to get medical licenses, but the boards have been expediting licenses due to COVID and for areas in need. I’ve done all I have to do. We’re just waiting. Everything’s in the hands of the California Medical Board.”
While waiting, McLaughlin is making a “mental list” of the things he would like to do just as soon as he can get started. “I hate to be reactive,” he said. “COVID is going to dictate a lot but we need to look at TB, HIV and opioids. I’d like to leverage the county’s great environment to address heart diseases, life years lost, road traffic accidents, etc. A lot of programs got dropped when COVID hit.”
McLaughlin doesn’t see living some 700 miles away in Nevada as an obstacle to working for Lake County, pointing out that the pandemic, while being “a curse was also a blessing.” It accelerated and expanded the use of communications technology by phone, video or computer and gave patients convenient access to health care and care providers from any location through telehealth or telemedicine.
“There is no substitute for hands-on care but COVID has revealed that we can work competently through video and telemedicine,” McLaughlin commented. “You can be everywhere at once. I can Face Time with someone remotely. I have the ability to look at population data set and interpret what the needs are, look at, and prioritize goals. Lake County has lots of room to improve upon on health metrics. We can do bridge building, planning and carrying out projects. The idea of having to spend 24/7 in the same location has gone away. Gone are the days of physically being planted on the same site.”
And working from a remote location is nothing new to the multilingual physician who was born in San Diego and grew up in Tucson, Arizona. A great deal of his time in 17 years of clinical medical practice has been spent on global health and the global stage. “I’ve managed projects in Australia and was PHO and physician on six continents,” he added. McLaughlin said he has launched multiple businesses and is the chief medical officer of a clinic practice management and health care consulting business that has nationwide and overseas clients. He has provided clinical services to federal entities such as the Indian Health Service within the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense, Veterans Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of State, Department of Energy as well as Doctors of the World.
McLaughlin also has served as county medical director of Cochise County Health in Arizona. “Most of my work there was done remotely,” he noted. “The issues we faced are the same. We also have several businesses based out of Las Vegas that are non-specific to Las Vegas and no ties to Las Vegas. We moved there right before the pandemic and we stayed due to COVID-19.”
He continued: “Competent physicians cross-pollinate. I have other duties. I am a professor of public health. That keeps me current. I also have a role supporting other entities that I cannot extricate myself from. It’s not a good time to bail out from people due to the pandemic.” As an adjunct professor at Benedictine University in Illinois, McLaughlin teaches graduate level public health and global health classes to online/remote students.
At different times in his career, McLaughlin has worked as an emergency doctor in the rural Arizona communities of Nogales, Springerville, Show Low, Douglas and Parker, as well as Choctaw, Mississippi, where he provided care to an “underserved Native American population.” For McLaughlin, rural health is a passion and patient population is what he wants to work with. “I gravitate toward rural medicine. I grew up in a town near Tucson where there were more cows than people,” he explained.” In rural towns, relationships are so much more real. People there have ideas in line with mine. They do the same things. They generally are whom I want to be around. They have barriers to care and need more care.”
Where opinions may differ, such as the pandemic, he hopes to work in tandem with his community partners. “Ultimately, it comes down to building trust and bridges,” he said. “As a physician, I can offer opinions and science. I care most about people being healthy, not political stances, not polls. I care about death rates and incidences of disease. It’s like working as a conductor of a choir – if harmonizing, you can have a great outcome. My role is to present information, evidence and medical concepts into easy and actionable items and communicate to others. You may not like what your teammates are doing, respect that. But work together. It’s a give and take. We are there to help, not hurt.”
He recognizes Lake County has the type of environment he wants to be in but living in any one place permanently may not fit in his plans. He and his family love to travel and to see different things. “Everyone in my family is quite adventurous,” he admitted. “We like meeting new people. Lack of mobility is our challenge. I do see myself spending time in Lake and looking at houses. I don’t think we’d move to one spot, grow old and die there. We can never be full-time exclusive anywhere. It seems Lake County has a great patient population. I am looking forward to visiting – being outdoors, hiking climbing. For me, it’s always nice to be where my family is, no matter where we’re at.”
