MISSION, Ore. — Rex “Matt” Quaempts holds close memories of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. He grew up here, hunting pheasants in the fields, swimming in the river, sitting in the sweat lodge with his father and playing catcher on his Babe Ruth baseball team.
The physician always planned to return to his boyhood home to practice, it just took a little longer than he intended. A few weeks ago, Quaempts finally started seeing patients at the Yellowhawk Tribal Health Center in Mission.
He is an accomplished physician — the Association of American Indian Physicians just named him as 2014 Physician of the Year — but Quaempts almost didn’t become a doctor at all.
He earned a botany degree at Oregon State University and a master’s at the University of Arizona with plans of becoming a plant pathologist. The Pendleton High School graduate did a sudden U-turn at 24 after getting some grim news from the reservation.
“I got a phone call from home that a kid I grew up with had committed suicide,” he said. “That’s what got the ball rolling.”
It wasn’t the first time, and that bothered him. It drew him into medicine.
Earlier this week, the 52-year-old family doctor sat back in his chair and looked pensive as he took a break from the steady stream of patients at Yellowhawk. He played with the bead-encased tubing of a stethoscope slung casually around his neck as he thought about friends he lost.
“Some of them just started taking their lives,” he said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, suicide rates are higher in Indian Country than for any other population group in the United States. The suicide rate among American Indians/Alaska Natives from ages 15 to 34 is 2.5 times higher than the national average for that age group.
Quaempts started applying to medical schools. After earning his medical degree at the University of Washington and completing his residency, Quaempts had another choice to make. He could return to the Umatilla Reservation or serve the Yakama Nation where he is a registered member. The Yakama tribe had given him money for medical school.
“They invested in me,” he said.
He figured he would practice there for a while and then head home.
“One year went by and then another and another and another,” Quaempts said. “Nineteen years went by.”
Finally, he made the switch. Yellowhawk CEO Tim Gilbert described Quaempts as a seasoned and award-winning doctor who has been on the radar for some time.
“Dr. Quaempts is credentialed and experienced and brings personal insight and understanding of the culture and the reservation that would take outside providers many years to acquire,” Gilbert said.
Quaempts describes himself as an old-school doctor who often cared for elders in their homes in the Yakima area and who occasionally gives out his cell number. He generally obliges when patients ask medical advice when they bump into him out in public.
“I’ve been told I have no boundaries,” he said with a laugh.
Quaempts himself has the healthy glow of a former Ironman who still bikes, runs, fishes and hunts. As a family doctor, he tackles an array of health issues. Indian Country’s high suicide rate continues to disturb him and might in part explain why he tries to get to know his patients so well. Periodic deaths sadden him, such as a Yakama preteen who recently killed herself.
Quaempts’ daughter, a junior in high school, and his wife remain in Yakima. He lives with family members and commutes back and forth between Pendleton and Yakima, working three 10-hour days each week.
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