Dr. Ray Feaster helped to convert the Michael Jordan Clinic to a COVID testing site
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Meet more of Charlotte’s health care heroes
We’re sharing the stories of health care heroes in the Charlotte area who are helping to make a dent in the fight against COVID-19 — while making a difference in the lives of patients and their families.
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Dr. Ray Feaster starts Monday mornings with a staff huddle at the Novant Health Michael Jordan Family Medical Clinic, a COVID-19 testing site in West Charlotte. Most days, patients are already waiting to be seen.
“[We] talk about the strategy and any new changes related to COVID-19 testing that came out over the weekend or overnight,” Feaster, 44, said. “A typical Monday in an atypical time.”
She was part of the leadership team to convert the Michael Jordan Family Medical Clinic from a primary care facility to a coronavirus testing center. Respiratory assessments began on April 15. In the first two weeks, the staff at the clinic saw 344 patients and conducted more than 260 COVID-19 tests.
“It’s really been welcomed by the community,” Feaster said. “We’ve had mixed numbers from day to day, but the numbers have grown as awareness has increased. We’ve seen the whole spectrum – from the worried well, folks who are curious about whether they have COVID but have no symptoms or risk factors, to the sickest of the sick who we have to transfer to the ER.”
In 2008, Feaster started as a hospitalist – a practicing in-patient physician – at Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center. Feaster’s role within Novant changed almost two years ago; she took on leadership and administrative duties as a clinical physician executive for Novant Health’s Charlotte Center City and Mint Hill submarkets. She helps oversee the year-old Michael Jordan Family Medical Clinic and 25 other primary care and specialty clinics.
To learn more about how clinics operate, she took the initiative to work as a primary care physician at Novant Health Mint Hill Family Medicine, now her home-base clinic.
“Most of the providers I lead are primary care doctors, so I really felt that in order to maximize my leadership, I needed to be more experienced in that arena,” Feaster said. “I made an executive decision for myself to do both – maintain my critical skills as an inpatient hospitalist physician but also really become more knowledgeable about the outpatient provider and understand the pros and cons and pitfalls. And I’ve enjoyed it.”
Feaster enrolled at Furman University in Greenville, S.C., with the intention of becoming an attorney, loosely based on her love of NBC’s television show “L.A. Law.” While at college, she discovered her talent for biology, chemistry and science and changed her major to biochemistry. She graduated from the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Columbia and completed her internal medicine internship and residency at Palmetto Health Richland/University of South Carolina. She is board certified in internal medicine.
Feaster said she worries the most about people not taking the pandemic seriously. In her practice, she’s noticed how the presentation of the virus varies.
“Folks can have it and not really know it,” Feaster said. “Then a day after we’ve seen them, they’re really sick and in the ICU. There are no rules for this virus.”
When all five members of one family tested positive for COVID-19 at the Michael Jordan Family Medical Clinic, they were told to go home to quarantine. One family member told the staff they didn’t have enough food at home to last the duration of the quarantine. The staff at the clinic didn’t hesitate. They collected money and purchased two weeks worth of groceries for the family, Feaster said.
“I think in the midst of all of this,” she said, “it can bring out the best in people and the best in humanity.”
