Suite 203, Jane Woodruff Clinic
209 Hospital Drive 
Highlands, NC 28741
(828) 526-5045

One of the most respected obstetricians and gynecologists in Western North Carolina will be relocating his practice to Highlands this January.

James Clayton Smallwood, MD, FACOG, who practiced for 22 years in Sylva, and who has been a member of the teaching staff at the Mountain Area Health Education Center in Asheville for the last three and a half years, will become part of the medical staff at Highlands-Cashiers Hospital. His practice here will focus exclusively on gynecology.

“This is a major development for Highlands-Cashiers Hospital. Dr. Clay Smallwood has an outstanding reputation and a tremendous following of patients across Western North Carolina, including many patients in the Highlands-Cashiers area, and we are extremely pleased that he is coming to practice here,” said hospital Interim CEO and Vice President of Operations, Frank Leslie. “We have been looking to bring a viable gynecological program to the hospital and we could not have found a better qualified, more respected physician to help make that happen.”

If past loyalty is any indication, Leslie said the hospital expects that many of Dr. Smallwood’s patients from surrounding communities will follow him to his new office in Highlands. Word of his coming to Highlands has already been generating excitement on various social networking sites.

“We hope that the addition of those patients to the base of women who already here who need GYN services will make this a viable program for us. It will also strengthen our surgical program overall,” Leslie said. “Along with the highly respected physicians that are here in family practice, general surgery, gastroenterology and several other specialties, the addition of someone of Dr. Smallwood’s reputation places Highlands-Cashiers Hospital once again at the top of the list in the region for places to find great medical care.”

Smallwood said he is looking forward to focusing solely on gynecology, even though he realizes that will disappoint many of his patients who have turned to him over the years to deliver their children. While he doesn’t have an exact count, he estimates that over his career in Western North Carolina he has delivered between 4,000 and 5,000 babies, including several generations right here in the Highlands-Cashiers area.

He will open his practice Jan. 4, seeing patients three days per week and performing surgery in the hospital’s surgical center one day per week. His new offices will be located in Suite 203 of the Jane Woodruff Clinic on the hospital campus. Appointments can be made by calling (828) 526-5045.

Smallwood says he is looking forward to practicing in the Highlands-Cashiers area again. Back in the mid 1980s, he actually used to see patients on a visiting basis at both the offices of Drs. Mark Heffington and David Wheeler in Cashiers, and in Highlands at the offices of Drs. John Baumrucker and Carlyle Mangum.

The new office here will also be more convenient for many of his patients than his offices in Asheville.

“I feel the patients I have in Franklin, and certainly those who are here in Cashiers and Highlands, will find the new location much more convenient,” he said during a planning visit to the hospital last week. “Both the office and the surgical facilities here are certainly very nice, and I know my patients will appreciate that as well.”

He’s also looking forward to working again with general surgeon William J. “Billy” Noell, MD, FACS, who moved his practice to Highlands a year and a half ago. “He and I have worked on a lot of cases together over the years in Sylva, and I’m looking forward to collaborating with him again on cases where a second surgeon is needed,” he said.

Apart from the absence of obstetrics, Smallwood says he does not believe the move to Highlands-Cashiers Hospital will change the nature of his practice. “I will still be able to do all the gynecological procedures that I did at WestCare (now MedWest) in Sylva, or that I have been doing at Mission Hospital. I know I’ll miss working with the residents at MAHEC and the teaching aspects, but I won’t miss having to be on call, which involved being away from home so much.”

Smallwood joined the staff at MAHEC in June of 2006 as a clinical assistant professor of medicine in the Department of OB-GYN of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. He was also on the medical staff of Mission Hospitals in Asheville. He was awarded MAHEC’s Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award for the 2006-07 year.

He earned his medical degree in 1975 from the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, where he was a classmate of F. Augustus “Gus” Dozier, MD, the other general surgeon now on staff at Highlands-Cashiers Hospital (the two have kept in touch over the years). Dr. Smallwood completed his internship and residency in obstetrics and gynecology at the United States Air Force Medical Center at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi, and he worked at medical centers at two other Air Force bases in the early 1980s, including serving as chief of obstetrics and gynecology, before entering private practice in Sylva in 1984.

He is certified by the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and accredited in advanced operative laparoscopy by the Accreditation Council for Gynecologic Endoscopy. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

He is a member of the North Carolina Medical Society, the North Carolina Obstetrical and Gynecologic Society, the American Medical Association, the American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists and the Southern Obstetric and Gynecologic Seminar, Inc. he also serves on the Committee on Practice Bulletins – Obstetrics for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Based in Washington, DC.