ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 3, 1996 TAG: 9611040102
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER A photograph that Kenneth Tuck shot
of water birds wading in the Florida surf hangs in his office. It's proof, the
doctor said, that he can leave work behind. But it doesn't happen very often.
Tuck, who was installed Saturday as president of the Medical Society of
Virginia, has a work ethic honed by growing up as the son of a tobacco and
dairy farmer in Moneta.
"We never left the farm, and we never had vacations," Tuck said.
Right out of high school, Tuck drove an ice truck. He later worked at Burlington Mills and The Lane Co. and did double shifts at Bedford's Rubatex rubber plant to earn money for college.
A person can learn a lot of discipline on an assembly line, he said.
But, growing up in rural Bedford County also inspired Tuck to a medical career, untiring service to professional groups and respect for patients as equals.
Tuck said he always wanted to be a doctor, and he wanted to be able to relate to patients like the physician who delivered him, Dr. Sam Rucker.
Rucker, who died at age 81 in 1987, liked to say that he had such a relationship of trust with his patients that he never had to send bills for his care. Even after his retirement, Rucker built up a substantial informal medical practice of people who came to consult with him at his hangout, the Moneta Pharmacy.
Tuck spoke of Rucker as a "life hero" Saturday when he assumed leadership of the 6,500-member medical group during its annual meeting in Norfolk.
The Roanoke ophthalmologist takes over during one of the society's most highly politicized periods.
In the past two years, the medical group gave birth to a health insurance-physician alliance that is designed to give doctors more clout in negotiating managed-care contracts.
It vigorously lobbied the General Assembly for passage of the Patient Protection Act. The act, among other things, says that insurance companies cannot restrict physicians concerning the kind of information they give patients about available treatments. It also says patients have a right to know the financial arrangements insurers have with doctors, such as whether the doctor makes more money for making fewer referrals to specialists.
The medical group also pushed for legislation that gives doctors, not insurance companies, control over how long a woman should remain in the hospital after giving birth.
During Tuck's term in office, the group expects to continue pushing for doctors to have more control over patient care in the managed-care setting.
Like the group he now leads, Tuck concedes that managed care isn't going away, so he's committed to making the best of it by being involved in its direction.
"All of us are going to have to develop working relationships with other groups," Tuck said. Even his two-person practice in time will have to merge with more of their kind, he said.
That wasn't always Tuck's position. He and a former associate, Dr. Kurt Guelzow, split after 14 years when Guelzow wanted to affiliate with a larger group of eye physicians. Tuck said the two still are friends, and when Dr. Scott Strelow, Tuck's associate since June 1995, was considering the move to Roanoke, Tuck encouraged him to talk to Guelzow.
"Kurt had only nice things to say about Ken," Strelow said.
The main reason Tuck sought a new associate was that some of the time he'd had for medicine he knew would be taken by Medical Society activities when he became its president. He plans to spend at least one day a week at the society's headquarters in Richmond, something previous presidents have not done.
"I'm a hands-on person," Tuck said.
And tireless, said his associate Strelow.
"Energy is Ken Tuck's defining characteristic," Strelow said.
Tuck gets up around 4 a.m. to dictate and read - about health care trends and about his specialty. He's on the board of trustees of the American College of Ophthalmology. By 6 o'clock, he's at the Roanoke Athletic Club jogging or using one of the exercise machines. He gets to the office before 7. Patient appointments begin at 8, except on Saturdays when Tuck starts seeing patients at 6.
Until recently, when he began to realize that he had to build in more time away from patients, Tuck worked through lunch, grabbing a bite in between appointments, said Deanna Weaver, who has worked as his administrative assistant for 21 years.
Tuck's private office is on the second floor of his building on Franklin Road Southwest. He didn't want to take the time to go upstairs during the day, so Weaver set up a mini-office with multiline telephone in a first-floor closet.
Weaver said Tuck is "very businesslike" and expects others to be the same, but he sometimes calls his staff by "pet names." Weaver's is "Boll Weevil."
Another side of Tuck also is exhibited by the memorabilia and paintings with a Southwest theme that decorate his clinic.
The two years he spent working in public-health service in San Francisco and later with Indian health left him with a love for the Southwest.
A painting of buffalo grazing in the snow, one titled "Sons of Cochise," portraits of a cowboy and an Indian girl and an etching of a scene from Yellowstone Park line the walls of his offices, downstairs and upstairs.
"I love the outdoors, but I don't have time to get out in it, so I brought it inside," Tuck said.
Instead of pastimes, he decided he should focus on more productive pursuits such as working with the many medical associations he has joined since he completed a three-year fellowship at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, N.Y., and went into private practice in 1964.
Tuck does not view his association work, not even his medical-society presidency, as political, even though it certainly involves politics.
"It's all in a day's work," he said. He considers it public service that he owes because of the opportunities he has had in life.
Tuck had a full scholarship for the final two years of study at the University of Virginia Medical School and said he felt obligated to "pay that back."
The payment is taking the form of service he gives to furthering his profession, he said.
He also has been a volunteer with the Free Clinic of Roanoke Valley since it opened. Providing free care to working people who couldn't afford insurance "is like tithing," Tuck said.
This latest role as head of the state doctors association has him a little nervous, though.
"I'm just beginning to realize what I've gotten into," he said.
Tuck bought a new tuxedo for this weekend. He spent eight hours rehearsing speech-making with the American Medical Academy communications expert. The speaking engagements are already filling his calendar; the first is Monday night before the Portsmouth Medical Society.
"In the past I've always imagined I'm behind the scene working for a cause. Now they want me to come out on stage ... out for all the people I represent," Tuck said. "It's one thing to fail for yourself but to fail for others would be horrible."
LENGTH: Long : 130 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Roger Hart. Dr. Kenneth Tuck has never been afraid ofby CNBhard work, and he's not about to slack off now that he has a new
challenge. color. GRAPHIC: Chart. color. KEYWORDS: MGR PROFILE