Dr. Jones received his medical degree from the Medical College of Virginia and completed his residency at the University of Alabama Hospitals, Birmingham, Ala. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, and joined Bon Secours Medical Group in 2000.

Q. You joined Bon Secours Medical Group in 2000 with some other doctors from your former practice. Why did you come here?

A. We wanted an environment where we could practice medicine and not have to worry about the business part of things.

Q. What's the advantage of being part of a group with hospital facilities?

A. We use the hospitals to admit our patients who go to Bon Secours facilities. They'll [staff at the hospital will] see them in the emergency room and admit them and then communicate with us about what's going on.

Or if we need to directly admit a patient to the hospital we can call the hospital, tell them what the situation is and we get the patient directly admitted. And that's a big advantage to us because unfortunately some of the other facilities in town don't allow that.

Q. You say this is a benefit to a physician. How so?

A. It has dramatically changed my lifestyle. It allows me to be able to focus on what I'm doing in the office during the time that I'm in the office. I'm not going to get interrupted multiple times per day to have to deal with the emergency room.

You know you can go home, have dinner with your family and not have to worry about whether you're going to have to go back to the emergency room to admit the patient that requires that. It's just freed us up a lot from time constraints.

Q. You talk about going home and having family time. How does that make you a better doctor?

A. I think it allows you to have that time to clear your head and to escape from what you do all day long.

I think it does help a lot. Even when we're on call at night, the calls that we get are not that frequent and it allows you to get the rest you need at night to function the next day.

Q. If you were to talk to doctors considering getting involved with Bon Secours, what would you say is the best reason to come on board here?

A. I'd probably say support is the best reason, and I mean that on many different levels. We've been provided with the support we need from other clinical staff within the practice as well as the business side of things.

There's always someone that you can turn to and say, 'OK, how can we make this better?' To create an environment that's not only best for our career but also for the patient. Because I think that's ultimately the most important thing.

Dr. Kaur received her medical degree from the Autonoma University of Guadalajara. She received her 5th Pathway certificate at New York Medical. She completed her residency at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Chicago. She is Board Certified in Internal Medicine. Dr. Kaur is fluent in Spanish, Persian, and Hindi and Punjabi. She joined Bon Secours Medical Group in 2003.

Q. You began with Bon Secours Medical Center soon after your residency. Why here?

A. Honestly, I did not know much about Bon Secours, and I wasn't that familiar with Richmond. However, what interested me was the mission statement of the organization. That's what primarily brought me for the interview.

Q. What was it about the mission statement?

A. "To provide compassionate, quality healthcare to all those in need" is what attracted me to Bon Secours. That is why I went to medical school and that is what I want to do.

Q. What were some of the concerns you had as you began your career?

A. I wanted to be with an organization that I knew would support the decisions we were making, in terms of administrative support and not have a lot of hindrances.

Secondly, autonomy: which comes back to patient care.

You want to be able to take care of your patients and not be concerned with administrative tasks.

I had a 2-year-old when I first started, so I was also concerned about being able to take care of her, be a good mother and at the same time give my all to my patients.

Q. How has it gone? How does being here allow you to have that work/life balance?

A. From the very beginning, someone contacted me and told me about all these resources that Bon Secours had in terms of the daycare center. Then I found out about the partnership they have with Rainbow Station, which is right across the street, so my daughter went there, until this year when she started kindergarten.

I also have to say I have a great group of physicians. I have an absolutely wonderful group that I work with, and they were very understanding if she was sick or if I had to leave. At the same time I knew my patients were taken care of because they were in good hands, so I had peace of mind.

Q. So are you going to stick around for a while?

A. I plan to.

Dr. Rogers was born in Chattanooga, Tenn., and he attended Emory University in Georgia for his undergraduate degree. He received his medical degree from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at VCU's Medical College of Virginia. Dr. Rogers is Board Certified in Internal Medicine.

Q. You've been involved with the design team that is implementing the Epic Electronic Medical Records system at Bon Secours Richmond. Why is this so important?

A. Patient care and quality of care is a huge issue for Bon Secours, and we feel that electronic medical records will enhance safety, quality, and will improve communication.

Being able to access patient information that can be online, can be printed for the patient, and being able to access records, allows us to better educate the patient. You'll be able to bring up screens to show the patient their information and their study results in graphic form.

We're extremely confident that patient information is very secure, and, in fact, almost every step a staff or physician makes in the system can be audited.

Q. Obviously there are huge benefits for patients, but what about for physicians?

A. We'll be able to do some of this online with the secure system on our home PC. We can look at information, write orders, and do about anything we can do in the office.

Q. So when the pager goes off and you're at home with your family, you have what you need at your fingertips?

A. Absolutely.

Q. Tell me what this means to you in your life outside the hospital?

A. Well, our group is four physicians. All of us have young children at home. So our practice decided we'd like to take calls from home - not have to come to the hospital in the middle of the night or stay there all weekend - so that has worked beautifully for us.

I think Bon Secours really wants us to have time for our families. They want us to be comfortable and happy when we're not at work, so when we come to work we'll be rested and ready to go.

Q. Is the Bon Secours mission one of the things that attracted you to this practice?

A. I believe in the mission of helping people regardless of their abilities, their socioeconomic status or geographic location. I came from a large institution where we took care of a lot of indigent patients.

I'm used to that and very comfortable with that. That is one of my missions as well - that we should not discriminate on who we take care of. I've been very impressed with that here.

Dr. Rose received his undergraduate degree from Virginia Military Institute and received his medical degree from Eastern Virginia Medical School. He completed his residency at McLeod Family Practice in Florence, S.C. Dr. Rose is Board Certified in Family Practice.

Q. What was your top priority in deciding where you would practice medicine after your residency?

A. My biggest concern was, 'Am I going to have autonomy?' Being a resident - and I was a very independent resident - I wanted to go into a system where I was going to be given the opportunity to be myself. And to grow and learn and to be who I was as a family practitioner and not be dictated to.

Q. That led you to Bon Secours Medical Group?

A. It's the reason why I chose Bon Secours, particularly over the competing system, which was in the area at the time. Because the biggest difference is the fact that they tend to micromanage their doctors - what to do, how to do it, and how many patients they had to see. I felt like that wasn't the direction I wanted to go.

Q. Did you find autonomy at Bon Secours?

A. Bon Secours allowed me to be autonomous from the very beginning.

As the years went on, our needs and demands (as a practice) were tremendous. Eventually we found we needed to develop a new system for seeing patients.

This system, called Team Care, was created by a physician in Newport News. We brought this to the table with Bon Secours and asked them if we could go about this type of process of seeing patients. It was outside the box.

Q. How has it worked?

A. Over the past year we've done this - this out of box thinking - it worked tremendously. Patients love it.

We continue to grow with the highest rate in the Bon Secours area. We have new patients coming here all the time. We love it, the patients love it and we've had a tremendous time doing that.

Q. Switching gears for this last question, you obviously love living in Richmond. Can you talk a little about that?

A. I think the biggest thing is just the diversity. Not only the diversity of the people, but of the environment, the culture. You're so close to so many different aspects here whether you want to go see a play or drive to the beach, you're within two to three hours of everything.

It's been a great place to raise a family. In the area all around Richmond, the school systems are superb.

I grew up here, went to college here, and did my residency outside knowing that I would be coming back. I never plan to leave.