Eastern Plumas Health Care welcomes board certified family practice physician, Dr. Anne Williams, to its staff. She’ll be seeing patients primarily in Portola (including one Saturday per month). Dr. Williams has practiced throughout the Bay Area for the past 23 years, receiving her medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX.

Dr. Williams and her husband recently relocated to the Clio area and are in the process of building their home here. She said she has “happily moved from the Bay Area” to Plumas County. Williams said it was always her goal to practice in a rural setting, as she loves the outdoors, especially skiing, hiking, and horseback riding. Eastern Plumas County, she finds, combines a clean, healthy environment, with friendly and a surprisingly “savvy” population.

Williams has always combined her traditional practice with an interest in non-traditional medicine, including Chinese acupuncture and herbs. A licensed acupuncturist, she likes to look for non-drug alternatives for patients who are interested in this, and often is able to utilize it as an alternative to pain medication. “When it’s possible to treat a patient with vitamins and food instead of drugs, it’s always a plus,” she said, “and it minimizes side effects.” In addition, “when you can do acupuncture and have the pain go away, it’s a great feeling.” Williams credits her interest in alternative medicine to a characteristic desire, from a young age, to “explore new things.”

To that end, she puts her patients and their unique needs at the center of her practice, viewing the interaction with them as “very energizing…my interaction with patients should be fun and comfortable.” She gives them the opportunity “to come forth, be themselves and not be intimidated. I try to counter that,” she said. “Everybody needs breathing room.”

Williams said that the change from a city practice to a rural one was less of a transition than she might have expected. “It’s not that different,” she said. “There’s a lot of attention to detail. [The clinic] is well run and well managed. Everyone is very helpful and supportive. And, management is not too intrusive,” she added, comparing it to Sutter, which was “top heavy with management.”

Family practice suits Williams, she said, because “there’s a great diversity—it’s not boring. I like it because I can be useful…a little bit of everything appeals to my nature. I have a Renaissance state of mind,” she said, adding that there’s a humility that she finds in family practice physicians. There is more of a focus on “listening to patients and caring for patients,” that helps them avoid the “hubris that can get in the way” of those important qualities. Also, Williams recalls a woman pediatrician she had as a child, who was a role model. “The respectable old model…what medicine used to be,” of the family physician who took care of and had an intimate knowledge of entire families “still appeals,” she said.

Dr. Williams said she has too much energy to think about retiring yet, and so she brings her wealth of experience and a level of comfort in what she does to a rural community that she sees as a good fit. It may have taken her 23 years to get here, but both Dr. Williams and the patients of EPHC will benefit from that journey.