Tom Joiner, MD, is a dinosaur. He wants to make sure other doctors have the freedom to be one, too.

It’s a label he wears proudly, evoking the old-fashioned model of medicine he witnessed as a boy in Greenwood and practices today at his clinic in south Jackson.

“I always wanted to be a local, in-the-community-type doctor,” said Joiner, who opened his family practice clinic in 1985.

“I’m one of the few doctors that actually owns my own building, employs my own people, pays my own bills,” he said.

“Growing up, I thought that when you were sick, you went to the doctor. And whatever needed to be done, the doctor took care of it — whether you needed your appendix out or cream for a rash, or you had an earache. That was my role model, and that’s what I try to do today.”

As incoming president of the Mississippi State Medical Association, Joiner hopes the association will continue to support physicians’ direct relationships with their patients.

“We’re dedicated to protecting doctors’ ability to practice unencumbered,” he said. “The thing I would like to focus on is the ability to independently practice your art — to independently contract with patients without having third parties directing care, so that it’s taken out of your hands.

“You address these issues through organizations like MSMA, and we’re beginning to try to do the same thing at the level of the American Medical Association. The goal is getting organized medicine to fight for the rights of individual doctors.”

Rising overhead costs and stagnant reimbursement rates don’t make things easy. But the philosophy of independent care is one Joiner has lived out through the course of his working life.

“My patients depend on me,” he said. “They come to me for care and advice, and when I render that care and advice, I’m not encumbered by any other structure or organization or hospital. The only people I answer to are myself and my patient, and my relationship with my patient is foremost in my mind.”

While Joiner is on staff with nearly every hospital in the Jackson area, he’s never aimed to be employed by one. That’s not the case, he said, of most young physicians today.

“I used to see it as: You graduate, you become a physician, you establish yourself, and you take care of your patients,” he said. “The role now is changing to where doctors, when they come out, are looking for employment opportunities and asking what hospital should they go to work for. It’s just a whole different perspective on what their life’s going to be.”

While the MSMA must adjust to such new paradigms, the association is still there to represent and fight for doctors who structure their practices this way, Joiner said.

Joiner’s own involvement with the MSMA came through taking on leadership roles as far back as the 1980s in the Central Medical Society, a branch of MSMA of which he is a past-president. He has also been involved with the American Medical Society, the Mississippi Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Family Practice, and the Southern Medical Association. He is a former MSMA Board of Trustees member and former member of the Division of Medicaid’s Review of Medical Necessity.

Joiner received his undergraduate degree from the University of Mississippi. He went on to the UM Medical Center, where he served as chief resident.

“I’m a Mississippi boy all around,” he said. “I’ve never left the state and never intend to.”

Joiner is set to be inaugurated as MSMA president in May at the association’s 143^rd annual session. The gathering will be held this year in Tupelo, and is to include a golf tournament at Old Waverly Golf Course in West Point and events at the BancorpSouth Conference Center and the Tupelo Automobile Museum.

Founded in 1856, the association provides a way for the state’s physicians to ban together and speak with a collective voice, adding weight to the messages they deliver to the state Legislature, to Medicare and Medicaid and to other groups.

For Joiner, being involved in the association has provided an outlet to work toward solutions for the frustrating side of practice.

“The only thing I don’t like about the practice of medicine is the intrusiveness of the third parties,” he said. “But I can tell people I honestly enjoy what I do. The actual practice of medicine is a wonderful and fulfilling thing.”

Outside the clinic, Joiner’s chief interests fall under two categories — family and horses. His love for the latter was inspired by his father, who grew up in the 1930s and ‘40s.

“Back then, horse racing was as big as football and basketball,” Joiner said. “We would sit up at night and talk about the famous horses he had seen during that time.”

Since then, Joiner has had his own turn to marvel at the stars of the racetrack, including the 6-year-old mare Zenyatta whom he had the chance to watch at the Breeders’ Cup Classic this past November. In addition to Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., Joiner and his family have traveled to watch the races in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and make annual pilgrimages to the Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn in Hot Springs and to the Louisiana Derby in New Orleans.

He and his wife, Debbie, have three children: Jared, Melissa and Kerri; and a 3-year-old granddaughter, Cameryn.

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