Doctor's fee is still $5 — unchanged since 1970s
RUSHVILLE, Ill. — Stepping into the office of Dr. Russell Dohner feels like a trip back in time. At his one-man practice, the phones are rotary, the records are hand-written, and the charge — since the 1970s — has been just $5.
It's a fee that the 87-year-old family physician refuses to change because, he says, “most everyone can afford $5.” And if they can't, he says with a shrug, “we see them anyway.”
And so, even before his clinic opens at 9 a.m., the line out front is already 12 people deep. Factory workers with callused hands. Farmers in muddy work boots. Senior citizens leaning on canes and slumping teenagers with spiky hair.
All day long, they pack the gray vinyl seats in the waiting room. So many people come that, on a recent day, there wasn't a seat for Larry Lenover, a 64-year-old heavy equipment operator, who was happy to stand because, he says, “Dr. Dohner cares about everyone. It doesn't matter if you got money, or you don't.”
That open-door policy has made Dohner a beloved figure in Rushville, Ill., a city of 3,200 people — about 60 miles northwest of Springfield, Ill. — that has suffered from a drumbeat of factory closings and layoffs.
But it's not just the $5 fee that keeps the locals lining up. It is, they say, the kindness he has shown and the impact of his care. It is, in short, Dr. Dohner, a calm and gentle presence in a rumpled suit and fedora hat, who has, for nearly six decades, held the hand of the dying, tended to the sick and injured, and helped everyone else get on with the business of living.
There was the baby girl who suffered from seizures. “He would come to the house and sit beside her crib all night,” recalled the girl's sister, Lynn Stambaugh, now 49 and still touched by the memory. And the gasoline fire that left a 10-year-old boy badly burned. That child survived in large part because there was a doctor in town — Dohner, of course — who was in the emergency room that day.
“He loves the people in this community,” says Mayor Scott Thompson, 51, who, like most people over the age of 30, was delivered by Dohner. “And the thing is, people love him back.”
He is a small man whose large eyeglasses, bald head, and tufts of thinning white hair, just above his ears, give him the look of a wise, old owl. Stooped and increasingly frail, he moves slowly, barely picking up his feet as he shuffles between exam rooms.
But he continues to work because he knows, if not for his low fee, many couldn't afford medical care.
“I never went into medicine to make money,” he says. “I wanted to be a doctor, taking care of people.”
He works seven days a week, opening his office for an hour before church on Sundays. He has never taken a vacation, and rarely left Schulyer County, except for the occasional medical conference.
If someone gently suggests that he cut back, his answer is always the same.
“What if someone needs me?”
The day begins at 8 a.m. at the one-story, 25-bed hospital in Rushville, where every morning he handles paperwork and visits patients.
Next stop is the red-brick storefront on the town square where he has practiced for 57 years.
Charging $5 a patient, Dohner doesn't make any money for himself or his practice. He says he supports his work with income from his family farm, and other investments. Part of the formula, he says, is keeping costs low. He doesn't take health insurance, or do any billing. When patients arrive, there are no forms to fill out. Just tell the doctor what's wrong, and he'll do his best to help. If he can't, he'll send you to someone who can.
For those too sick to make the trip to the office, Dohner still makes house calls.
