Board of Trustees Spotlight
Dr. Laurie Theriot can’t say for certain whether her grandmother was formally recognized as a Cajun faith healer or whether her mother was an official hospital candy striper, but she does know she comes from a long line of women devoted to caring for the sick.
Today, Dr. Theriot is Chief of Geriatric Medicine for the Upstate at Prisma Health, Medical Director for Interim healthcare of the Upstate, and serves on the board of the South Carolina Medical Association (SCMA), continuing her family’s legacy of service.
“The women in my life really encouraged me in helping others and figured out a way to make that a part of their life,” she said.
Dr. Theriot, who grew up in South Louisiana in a bayou town called Delcambre, excelled at math and science and attended LSU in New Orleans for medical school.
A residency took her to Dayton, Ohio, to be closer to her now-husband, then serving in the Air Force. That residency helped shape her vision for the kind of doctor she wanted to be and the community she wanted to care for.
“I genuinely believe physician-led healthcare is what is best for the patients of South Carolina, with physicians guiding care teams and I appreciate the efforts that the SCMA does to help physicians take care of themselves, have better work-life balance and resources to enjoy the practice of medicine,” she said. Dr. Theriot said she didn’t initially consider geriatric care but found herself to be one of the few residents who enjoyed the environment and working with the population. “I remember looking over at a fellow resident and said, ‘What do you mean you don’t like going to the nursing home?’” Dr. Theriot recalls. “My patients at my practice were skewing older. I was drawn to this population, not even realizing I was doing it. Being able to care for this population is an honor and a really interesting population to take care of from a clinical standpoint.”
Dr. Theriot moved fully into geriatric care, which expanded to include palliative care, a niche that made sense from her upbringing.
“My mom remembers when I would come back from college, I would drop off my laundry and then go visit all of my grandparents first,” Dr. Theriot recalls. “She said, ‘That was always your first stop before you even went to visit your friends.’”
Working in skilled nursing also provided a welcome change from the high volume patient load she experienced as a traditional family practitioner.
“I always want to give the person in front of me everything they need but if that’s 30 minutes and I have an entire waiting room full of people who are getting mad, it’s stressful,” she said. “In geriatrics, rounds in the hospital and home visits are a lot more flexible. There isn’t that ‘waiting room pressure.’”
Rather than following textbook algorithms to respond to ailments and disease, working with this population is more about balancing the quality of life someone wants in their remaining time.
“There’s a lot more art to the medicine. It’s factoring when the consequences of being aggressive with chronic disease management are just too high for someone of an advanced age,” she said. “For many of my patients, it’s not just ‘I want to live as many days as I can,’ it’s ‘how much quality of life can I have in my remaining days?’ Especially in the hospice world, the more you focus on quality of life and symptom control, and especially in diseases like congestive heart failure and COPD, patients have been shown to actually live longer.”
Dr. Theriot’s membership in, and eventual board position into, the SCMA came when she signed up for a leadership conference in Columbia and met Dr. Stefanie Putnam, a board member and speaker of the legislative delegate committee.
“She is someone who sees that new person and makes them feel welcome and supported and I was hooked,” Dr. Theriot said.
Dr. Theriot quickly became active in the Greenville Medical Society, now serving as a trustee representing the physicians of Greenville County, relaying statewide issues outlined by the SCMA back to the local chapter.
She’s been an SCMA board member for nearly five years and has enjoyed the advocacy efforts of the SCMA at the statehouse.
“I’ve enjoyed the opportunities to get to know my elected officials. Everybody’s working together for what is best and it’s given me a new hope for South Carolina. It’s refreshing to learn what elected officials are passionate about and how they’re making decisions not just to get elected again, but on what they believe is right.”
That service-to-others mindset — one she sees as very similar to the calling of physicians — has inspired Dr. Theriot since childhood.
“I remember when I told my mom I was going into geriatrics, she wasn’t surprised at all,” Dr. Theriot recalls. “She said, ‘I see it – and I see exactly how you got here.’”
SCMA 2026 – 2027 BOARD OF TRUSTEES
OFFICERS
Jeffrey P . Cashman, DO President
Henry F. Butehorn III, MD Immediate Past-President, AMA Delegate
Amanda S. Davis, MD President-Elect
F. Cleave Ham, MD Chair, Trustee, Fourteenth District
James L. Wells III, MD (Jimmy) Vice-Chair, Trustee, Eighth District
Wesley H. Frierson, MD Treasurer
Gregory Tarasidis, MD (Greg) Secretary
Stefanie M. Putnam, MD Speaker of the LDC & AMA Alternate Delegate
A. Miles Scott, DO Vice Speaker of the LDC
TRUSTEES
Renee A. Monaghan, MD Trustee, First District
Laurie M. Theriot Roley, MD, Trustee, Second District
Jerome Aya-ay, MD Trustee, Third District
Asutosh S. Gor, MD (Bobby) Trustee, Fourth District
Rodney K. Alan, MD Trustee, Fifth District
Jessica Cvinar, MD Trustee, Sixth District
James M. Fuller, MD (Jim) Trustee, Seventh District
Stephanie Scott, DO Trustee, Ninth District
Lisa E. Heichberger, MD Trustee, Tenth District
Ryan Garbalosa, DO Trustee, Eleventh District
Gary A. Delaney, MD Trustee, Twelfth District & AMA Chair
Baxter F. McLendon, MD Trustee, Thirteenth District
Jaime Brown, MD Trustee, Young Physician Section
Jacob Vining, DO Trustee, Resident and Fellow Section
Kayla Jernigan (KB) Trustee, Medical Student Section and Clerk
AMA DELEGATES AND ALTERNATE DELEGATES
Gary A. Delaney, MD Trustee, Twelfth District & AMA Chair
Bruce A. Snyder, MD AMA Vice Chair
Henry F. Butehorn III, MD Immediate Past-President, AMA Delegate
M. Mayes DuBose, MD AMA Delegate
Alexander Ramsay, MD (Alex) AMA Alternate Delegate
Stefanie M. Putnam, MD Speaker of the LDC & AMA Alternate Delegate
Todd E. Schlesinger, MD AMA Alternate Delegate
Christopher A. Yeakel, MD (Chris) AMA Alternate Delegate
