A Look At Medical Care In Collierville

By William Fesmire, MD
– The Collierville Herald –

Ja Hayes, M.D. and Bill Fesmire, M.D. joined Pediatrics East, Inc. in the summer of 1987. A major factor in our decision was the promise that Peds East was adding a third office in Collierville to open in January of 1988 due to the growth in this area coupled with the lack of any pediatric presence.

We occupied a two-physician, eight exam room-structure staffing with two physicians on Mondays and one doctor the remaining days of the week. After the first year of existence, we saw the need to place two physicians in Collierville all five week-days. By the mid-1990s both Collierville and our Peds East office had grown so much that we staffed three physicians during the winter months, sharing exam rooms as best we could. Having expanded into Cordova and Bartlett during the 90s, building a new office in Collierville was not a priority, but we had far exceeded our space in the Poplar View location and began to look for property to build north of Poplar, but still on the West side of Collierville.

The building of the new Baptist Hospital helped to drive up property values north of Poplar at the time we became interested in the Schilling Farms property. It was our understanding that originally Baptist was offered a “great deal” on the property because the “forefathers” of Collierville passionately wanted a hospital of their own, but Baptist could never get over the idea that the Schilling property was divided from Poplar by the railroad and emergency vehicles “might” be stopped by a train.

Peds East also cared for the family that built and runs Kid Tech and was able to discuss the Schilling property freely with them. Kid Tech is the “finest” of child daycare facilities in the area. It always runs at maximum capacity and has full service daycare facilities. It sits across the street from our office and the family that began it and manages it has two boys whom we have cared for since birth.

We broke ground June 2000 and occupied out present office in April 2001.

Currently we have space for six providers and our Collierville office is the busiest of our four locations. We tend to draw patients from as far east as Bolivar and Tupelo, as far west as Arkansas, from the north up to Tipton county and throughout northern Mississippi. We have been thrilled with the location and with the way the Schilling property has grown in our six years here.

Baptist Collierville has been an “up and down” experience for us as pediatricians. We were one of the only groups to actively support obstetrics and were disappointed to see that dissolve. Both Baptist Memphis and Methodist Germantown have a pediatric emergency room and board-certified pediatricians dedicated to pediatric emergency room care. Baptist Collierville has no pediatric care available in its ER if their child is sick enough to potentially be hospitalized.

Routine illnesses such as strep throat, ear infections and broken bones or sutures can be adequately handled through the ER at Collierville, but most of these problems can also be seen in one of our clinics at a much lower cost to the patient. The outpatient X-ray and laboratory facilities at Baptist Collierville have routinely been outstanding and provide prompt service and reliable data.

We have been particularly pleased with the growth Collierville has experienced and the addition of medical sub-specialists over the last several years. Currently we not only have pediatric dentistry, but have orthopedics, ENT, allergy, psychology, dermatology and other specialties which in the past would have meant travel into East Memphis or Germantown.