Dr. Sharlene Kinney first arrived in Berkshire at the age of 12, when her parents, Gay and Howard Coon, bought a farm in the area, dreaming of raising some beef cattle and someday building a golf course.  They did both and currently own and operate Grandview Farms Golf Course in East Berkshire.  Sharlene Coon loved finishing her childhood on the farm, and graduated from Newark Valley High school as valedictorian in 1974.  She then attended Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences to study biology.  Halfway through college, she married her high school sweetheart, Roger Kinney, from Jenksville.  Sharlene was interested in a career in medicine during those years, but not interested in spending four extra years in school!  She researched alternatives and, upon her graduation in 1978, the couple headed to Baltimore, Maryland, so that she could study to become a  Physician Assistant (P.A.).  She completed that course of study in 1980, and spent the next 13 years practicing internal medicine as a P.A.  During those years, she and Roger remained in Maryland and established their own family, with Daniel coming along in 1984 and Carolyn in 1989.  Life was enjoyable in their suburb of Baltimore, but Sharlene and Roger missed home and family.

Sharlene enjoyed most things about being a P.A., but eventually grew tired of being “the assistant” and decided she was ready to make the commitment to attend medical school.  Roger supported her plan, and she started at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1993, the oldest in her class.  The medical school years were lots of work and lots of fun, and Sharlene graduated in 1997, Summa Cum Laude.  This was finally her opportunity to bring the family home to New York, so they moved to Apalachin and she completed the Family Practice Residency at Wilson Memorial Regional Medical Center, in Johnson City. 

Upon her residency graduation in 2000, she stayed on at the program as a full-time faculty member, teaching and supervising new residents and medical students, as well as taking care of her own patients, both in and out of the hospital.  These were exciting, stimulating years, but large amounts of overtime took their toll, and Dr. Kinney knew she had to take a break from trying to “do it all.”  In 2006, she took a position at a walk-in clinic in Endicott, then transferred to a new walk-in clinic in Owego when it opened in 2007.  Dr. Kinney enjoyed urgent care medicine’s more limited working hours, but all was not well, yet.  She found the pace too hectic, being expected to keep up with whatever number of patients walked in the door, while wanting to give each one all the time he or she really needed.  Also, she missed the lasting relationships she had developed with her patients at the residency practice and the feeling that the rapport she was able to build with them improved the quality of their medical care.  What she did not want to do, however, was return to the high-volume family medicine that is most commonly practiced today.   Fortunately, the more limited hours involved in urgent care medicine gave Dr. Kinney the time and energy to plan something completely new.

During residency, Dr. Kinney had started collecting articles about family physicians who have resisted the relatively recent trend of becoming salaried employees of hospitals or large physician groups.   These groups usually have large facilities and lots of equipment and  employees, resulting in very high overhead expenses.  To stay in business, their administrators insist that a primary care physician should see a patient every 10-15 minutes, in order to be “productive” enough to earn his or her salary and pay the overhead expenses of the organization.   Predictably, many doctors do not feel that they can do their best at all the tasks expected of a primary care physician, in the course of such short visits.  These new-yet-old-fashioned doctors have the goal of being able to spend much longer visits with their patients, in order to truly get to know them, establish trust and rapport, and give them the best medical care possible.  Since our system of insurance reimbursement does not allow billing significantly larger amounts to cover these longer visits, these doctors have come up with dramatic changes designed to slash the overhead costs of practicing medicine.  They employ such (currently) radical ideas as practicing from a single room or even from one’s home, hiring few or no support staff,  and using electronic medical records and billing to reduce the mountains of paper required.  And, since they believe that quality medical care is greatly enhanced by access to a patient’s own doctor when he or she needs it, they leave a good portion of each day’s visits unscheduled, so that sick patients can be seen the day that they call.  These principles are embodied in the Ideal MicroPractice movement, which serves as the model for  Dr. Kinney’s solo “micropractice.” 

When searching for a location for her new practice, Sharlene and Roger felt called to return still closer to their families, so they moved back to Berkshire, and Berkshire Family Medicine, PLLC was born.  Dr. Kinney launched this new and most-exciting stage in her career in October of 2008 and welcomes you to join her!