Ken Lord is based in St. George, Utah, and visits Moab once per month
The drive from St. George, Utah, to Moab takes nearly five hours, according to Google Maps. But the flight from St. George to Moab takes a little under one hour, making a round trip commute two hours instead of ten.
That flight time is what makes Ken Lord’s eye care practice at the Moab Regional Hospital possible: Lord, who is based in St. George, flies himself and a small team on his personal Piper M350 aircraft when he visits Moab once a month.
Lord is the only ophthalmologist at the hospital: an ophthalmologist is a specialized eye doctor who can diagnose and treat eye diseases, perform eye surgery, and fit eyeglasses and contact lenses. When he visits Moab, he said, he and the team typically see 50 to 60 patients and conduct 10 operations in one day, though sometimes they’ll stay for two—recently, Lord said, there’s been a backlog of surgeries that require him to stay an extra day.
It’s difficult to access specialized care in rural areas across the country. In 2017, the Association of American Medical Colleges wrote that rural Americans (in Utah, 25 of the state’s 29 counties are considered rural) “face inequities that result in worse health care than that of urban and suburban residents.” In 2019, the AAMC ranked Utah 49th in the nation for access to primary care, and according to the University of Utah’s College of Medicine, “rural and underserved areas face physician shortages more acutely.”
This year marks Lord’s fourth of flying back and forth between St. George and Moab. But Lord has known how to fly for years: he’s a 20-year Army veteran, and years ago, found himself with a three-month break between Army training and attending med school. He’d always been curious about flying and thought, why not take the first step?
Earning a private pilot’s license isn’t very complicated, Lord said, but earning his instrument rating—which would train him to fly at higher altitudes and farther distances—was a long and arduous process, taking nearly six months of flying and studying.
“In med school, I always wondered, what if I could fly to clinics and provide care?” Lord said. “It was just this romantic dream.”
After that, things just came together, Lord said. He went to med school at the University of Utah, then studied at the University of Missouri. But he wanted to return to southern Utah—he grew up in the region—so he opened a practice in St. George. When the opportunity came up to practice in Moab, he knew the ten-hour round-trip drive was out of the question. But then, his old dream materialized: he had the chance to buy a private plane, and he took it.
“I love flying, and I love the break in my schedule to come out to these rural communities,” he said. Lord and his team also fly to Ely, Nevada, and Page, Arizona. The flight from St. George to Moab is gorgeous, Lord said: the morning air is “just amazing,” though the return flight can sometimes be temperamental and bumpy.
“I really appreciate the people that know me and know what I do that accommodate us at the hospital—we get a lot of support along the way,” Lord said. “I feel like we provide a good service for the community, and the people at the hospital really make it worthwhile.”
