Dr. Kikel enters long-awaited and well-deserved retirement after long career in medicine
By Debra Ferrell
Caswell Messenger Editor
Retirements are often both happy and sad events; it’s no different for Dr. Stephen Kikel who is retiring April 1, 2024 after “seven fabulous years at Compassion Health Care, 41 years spread across the two specialties (family medicine and emergency medicine), serving as a family physician, emergency room physician, a hospital ED administrator), and finally here at Compassion Health Care as both a primary care provider and chief medical officer,” he explains.
Kikel found the position at Caswell Family Medical Center (CFMC), Yanceyville in February 2017 as he was looking for a final “family medicine job” from which he intended to retire. “Because I had grown up in small town America, with a single family doctor and “small town general practice,” it was my time to “pay it forward” in an under-served community like that served by the Federally Qualified Health Center otherwise known as CFMC. A basic premise our FQHC is to offer health care to those who might otherwise not have that opportunity,” he says.
Although it was his goal was to practice another five years or so and retire, those plans changed somewhat when he was asked to serve as the Chief Medical Officer for (then) Caswell Family Medical Center in 2018 and Covid was yet to create the devastating effects on the community and health care in America.
Fast forward 4 years…CFMC has grown to include two campuses (Yanceyville and Eden) and imminently “we will be starting our school-based health initiative with a two-exam room including a small lab bus that will visit each of the school campuses in Caswell County offering primary health care five days of the week.”
During his tenure, the office has added full service Behavioral Health, Psychiatry, and continued with specialty service by UNC Health Cardiology, a program of Clinical Pharmacy offered by a local pharmacist, and medication assisted treatment for substance abuse. It also began an Urgent Care Center at the Yanceyville office.
CFMC also grown into a new name for FQHC more representative of what we had become Compassion Health Care.
During his service at CHC he started as a staff primary care physician, worked part-time in the Urgent Care, and after the second year, began his duties as Chief Medical Officer.
Kikel, age 69, has been married for more than 35 years to Rene’ Kikel. He grew up in Oregon and was the oldest child of Frank and Marjory Kikel. He has two sisters and one brother. Rene’ grew up in Chicago where her family remains.
The couple lives in Danville, Virginia where they will remain following his retirement.
He was born in Sweet Home, Oregon, a small town with less than 3,500 population back then and attended Sweet Home High School.
He went on to undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon in 1977 and graduated from The Chicago Medical School, Chicago IL, in 1983. He completed his residency in Family Medicine in 1986. In 1986 he started in a solo practice family medicine Ashtabula, Ohio.
With the changing role of Emergency Medicine in the late 1980’s and with his previous interest in emergency medicine, Kikel began an almost 25 year career as Emergency Medicine in Whiteville, NC 1990-1995; Kinston, NC 1996-1999; Edenton, NC 1999-2003; and Hickory, NC 2003-2014.
Following retirement from Emergency Medicine, Kikel migrated to Urgent Care and Family Medicine in Hickory NC, 2014-2017.
The prospect of retirement is a tantalizing one where his wife and he intend to travel within the US, to visit the country one last time. “I certainly do wonder if I’m able to have “no set schedule” for the first time in 50 years. There are a number of interest areas to come back to such as listening to music.
He plans to do some volunteering but has no specific plans at this time.
When asked if he feels like he’s accomplished his goals or if he still have things he wants to accomplish, Kikel explains,
“I do feel as though we brought several of our programs online and I am very proud of the teams who have contributed so much to our expanding of our services over the last several years. A few examples of these services and programs are the Urgent Care 2017, full-time Psychiatry and Behavioral Health. We’ve expanded into Rockingham County with our second office, The James Austin Health Center. In the past year we started The Medication Assisted Treatment Program and our Clinical Pharmacy program in conjunction with North Village Pharmacy. Just this month we are going live with our School Based Initiative here in Caswell County. And of course there were the years of severe Covid when we had to learn once again how to protect ourselves and our patients while we tried to continue to practice health and wellness and preventative health care for our patients.
He is grateful for his time in Yanceyville and says, “I have learned so much from the team of the health care team and administrators at initially the Caswell Family Medical Center and now known as Compassion Health Care. I have learned that none of us can do it alone. It does take a team and I am grateful to have been a member of a great team.