New Prescription For Life Doctor Trades Big-City Ways For Country Comforts Of Inland Northwest

Craig Stevens, M.D., is one of those rare heroes, a country doctor. Unlike P.G. Jones, a legendary Clark Fork druggist who returned from a six-month prison stint claiming he was a doctor, Dr. Stevens graduated from a major medical school in 1976.

Certified in physical medicine and rehabilitation (physiatrics), as well as electrodiagnostic medicine, in 1979, Stevens became director of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Bethesda Naval Hospital in the Washington, D.C., area. He soon found himself working 100 hours a week, heading up the rehab department for two area hospitals, consulting with the National Institutes of Health, running three offices and participating in two orthopedic groups.

As a boy growing up in Wellsboro, Penn., Stevens had accompanied his doctor dad on house calls. His idea of medicine had always been that of “quality patient care.” But his busy schedule and many obligations prevented him from spending the time he wanted with each patient. “It was very unfulfilling,” he said.

Midlife hit. Stevens had always dreamed of a country practice, but his first wife had no interest in leaving Washington, D.C. They divorced in 1995.

He met Luciann. “She loved remote areas,” he said, “and shared my idea of living in a log cabin.” They married in 1996.

There wasn’t a need for physicians in the Pennsylvania town of his youth, but Stevens knew doctors were scarce in the small isolated towns dotting the Inland Northwest. Although he had never been here before, he said, the newlyweds flew to Spokane, rented a car, and made a thousand-mile circle from Spirit Lake to Kalispell, Mont. Their journey ended in Clark Fork.

“I knew this would be a place where old-time values mattered,” he said. Values like community spirit.

“There’s a certain security when faces look familiar,” he added. “I like that.”

Craig and Luciann found a log home easily accessed from Highway 200 and just east of the town of Clark Fork. A modular house also came with the property. The Stevens and Luciann’s two children moved into the log home, built a wheelchair-accessible entry to the modular and set up a clinic. A lab and full pharmacy occupy the former kitchen. An X-ray machine fills one bedroom, and two exam rooms occupy the other bedrooms. There is a large central reception area and a small office for the doctor.

Word got around. People came from a hundred-mile radius for Stevens’ personal brand of patient care. Although isolated, with the help of Internet access to the National Library of Medicine, and consultation with Medline in Spokane just a phone call away, Clark Fork’s country doctor is able to “practice current modern medicine,” he said.

Stevens capped his patient roster at a thousand by the end of August 1999, after just one year in the area. But he remains available for emergencies, and those frantic knocks on the front door after hours are never turned away.

Unlike P.G. Jones, who specialized in delivering babies, Stevens has gone from being an “ultraspecialist” to an “ultrageneralist.”

“I gave up a BMW lifestyle,” he said, and now drives a 1978 Scout with a snowplow blade on the front.

After 18 years in the high-stress life of a big-city medical practice, Stevens says he enjoys being a doctor.

And he likes his patients, some of whom no doubt came into the small town of Clark Fork with the help of his illustrious predecessor, P.G. Jones.