Brenau alumna LaSharn Hughes aims to improve health care access in Georgia’s underserved areas

Soft-spoken and poised, LaSharn Hughes, BU ’98, ’04, keeps a giant map of Georgia above her desk so she can visualize her projects. She points to Echols County in south Georgia and says, “See that town called Needmore? Well, they do, in fact, need more. My job is to help them get it.”

Hughes is executive director of the Georgia Board for Physician Workforce, which identifies and addresses the need for medical practitioners in communities throughout the state, particularly in underserved areas. The board also administers the Physicians for Rural Areas
Assistance Program, which provides funding to repay medical school debt to those who give direct care in these underserved areas. The program has proved effective in retaining talent since it was established in 1990, with 80 percent of the recipients remaining in Georgia and 60 percent of them staying in their original qualifying counties.

Overseeing a staff of six with a budget of more than $65 million, Hughes crunches numbers, charts demographics and counts beans to meaningful effect for patient advocacy. She recently expanded her agency’s debt repayment programs to include nurses, nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants and dentists.

The Physicians for Rural Areas Assistance Program aids doctors such as Jason Nesmith, who graduated from medical school at Morehouse College in 2008. He could have established a practice in metro Atlanta or landed a coveted spot at a big-city hospital, but he felt a different calling.

“I wanted to work in primary care internal medicine in a rural community,” he says, “but I also had accumulated a lot of student debt.”

As luck would have it, Hughes knew just the spot for Nesmith and stepped up with a ready solution. Then executive director for the Georgia Composite Medical Board, she told Nesmith that if he would hang his shingle in rural Cairo, Georgia, the state would give him $25,000 per year for up to four years to pay off his student loans.

“That was a tremendous asset that enabled me to establish a good practice in a short amount of time without a lot of debt,” he says. “I like the relationships that you can build in small towns with your patients who are your neighbors. You don’t get that in urban communities.”

Hughes strives to find doctors such as Nesmith, who plans to stay in Cairo, with these financial assistance programs designed to fill the gaps of medically underserved areas. Many counties in Georgia with populations of 35,000 or fewer lack a physician.

“Rural areas make up almost 18 percent of Georgia’s population, yet only 7 percent of physicians practice in these so-called ‘medical deserts,’” she says.

When these healers finally complete their educations with as much as $350,000 in student debts, they just might opt for an office in a quaint downtown or a piney woods crossroad. “We keep up to date on the current data so we can help physicians in their decision making,” she says.

Hughes provides information and research that improves access to health care for all Georgians, according to Dr. Antonio Rios, chief physician executive of the Northeast Georgia Physicians Group and the rising chairman of the board for Hughes’ agency. “She’s professional, super smart and open to new ideas,” he says. “She adeptly juggles several balls at once, and she has been just phenomenal in advancing the work of the board.”

Adds fellow board member Dr. Jean R. Sumner, dean of Mercer University’s School of Medicine, “Her service to the state reflects the very best of what a public servant should be and do. She’s thorough and masterful at expediting policies and procedures. And she never seeks credit or the spotlight. She works behind the scenes to make things run efficiently and effectively. She’s a leader in the truest sense of that word.”

From campus to capital

Near the map in her office, Hughes displays a copy of the Brenau Ideal and photos of campus. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in education in 1998 and then returned to earn an MBA in 2004. Her daughter, Lauren, is a rising junior at Brenau, majoring in dance.

“Brenau was one of the best decisions I’ve made,” Hughes says. “I was a working mother of two at the time, and Brenau was the only institution that offered me flexibility and didn’t require me to quit my job. I could take night and weekend classes. It worked out beautifully.”

Hughes lives in Powder Springs, Georgia, but she grew up in the small town of Safford in Alabama’s rural Black Belt region. “You know the Gee’s Bend quilters?” she asks. “That’s my family. I come from a long line of quilters, and quilting is how I relax.”

After she graduated, Hughes started her career as a secretary for professional licensing boards in the office of the secretary of state. “I moved up to specialist and then to executive director of that board,” she says. “I oversaw licensure for athletic trainers, counselors, funeral homes, social workers, nursing homes and other businesses. It was very rewarding to work with these entrepreneurs and help them be at their best.”

She gradually drifted into the medical arena. “I learned on the job for the most part,” she says.

In 2001, Hughes joined the Georgia Composite Medical Board as the director of operations. She quickly distinguished herself by developing the agency’s first policies and procedures manual, which reduced operational time of the licensure process by 50 percent, and she implemented a $200,000 project displaying the profiles of every licensed physician in Georgia online. Within a couple of years, she was promoted to executive director.

Hughes made pain clinics a focus of her work. Surprisingly, until she tackled the policies, these medical organizations were not required to be licensed. “That was a massive, complicated undertaking for her,” Sumner says, “but thanks to her hard work, they now are all held to a higher standard.” Hughes led a multi-organizational effort that resulted in Georgia receiving the most dramatic year-to-year improvement in pain management policy ever recorded in the nation, from worst in 2006 to best in 2013. Hughes also worked with the American Cancer Society to establish guidelines for doctors who treat cancer patients for pain.

Meanwhile, she took a high-profile role as president of the National Association of Administrators in Medicine, influencing protocols for the entire country, and she revised and updated the Medical Practice Act, the law that regulates the medical board.

Hughes is known as a whiz with budgets, finding ways to save dramatic amounts of money. She identified new funding sources and enhanced existing ones to increase revenue raised through user fees by 208 percent, enabling the Georgia Composite Medical Board to continue to fund its activities without requiring additional support from general taxes. She also implemented an online board meeting program and other technology-based processes to cut annual printing and mailing costs by more than 55 percent, saving $54,000 a year.

“LaSharn brings fresh ideas that energize every board she serves on,” says Rep. Butch Parrish, the Swainsboro, Georgia, Republican who oversees the Health Appropriations Subcommittee that is the legislative body that underwrites Hughes’ work before it crosses the governor’s desk for approval. “She provides such good ideas for funding that I am expecting us to make some real progress with her help.”

Hughes clarifies: “We’re not a lobbying group. We collect and provide data to support our proposed budgets.”

Just the start

Amid this demanding flurry of activity, Hughes also finds time to be a mentor.

“If you asked me to name all of the people who helped me get to where I am today, one of the first names to come to mind would be LaSharn,” says Dr. Audra Cochran, who graduated from Brenau in 2011 before earning her M.D. at Mercer University. She interned for a year with Hughes and is currently doing her residency in family medicine at Columbus (Georgia) Regional Health’s Midtown Medical Center.

“She introduced me to big players in the state legislature and hospital administration, opening my eyes to a side of medicine I hadn’t fully appreciated before,” Cochran says. “I learned so much from her, but the most important thing LaSharn taught me was how to be a leader. Through her example, I learned that a truly great leader takes care of her people, knows when to stand her ground and pursues her goals with determination and passion. “She knows that no great task was ever accomplished alone, and she utilizes the talents of her team members to find creative solutions to problems. However, she is anything but a pushover; her approach is both tactful and direct, which serves her quite well in negotiations. I can guarantee you she has served as a mentor and advocate for countless others as well. This woman is a giver through and through.”

In 2015, Hughes briefly retired from the government to work in the private sector. “Yes, I made more money,” she says, rolling her eyes, “but I wasn’t as fulfilled. I like the feeling that I’m making a difference. Heck, even seeing a huge certificate on the wall of a mortuary that I licensed gives me a sense of satisfaction. I think, ‘I played some small role in that.’”

Her stint in the corporate world lasted a scant few months, and then she was back working for the state. She took command of the Georgia Board for Physician Workforce and got down to work with the same meticulousness, detail and care she brings to her patchwork quilts. She holds four opportunity fairs a year to help doctors find jobs with employers that fit their goals. Small towns and isolated farm communities can take heart that she is working tirelessly to provide them with good doctors, nurses and dentists.

“It’s been a good run so far,” she says, “and I’m not finished yet.”