For most of his adult life, 55-year-old Alton Graves did not have a doctor he saw regularly. He sought medical care only when the need was dire. “The emergency room was my doctor,” he said. Graves found himself in such a situation a couple of years ago, when he developed a staph infection in an unhealed wound on his leg that eventually spread to his spine. Though he was in severe pain with a high fever, Graves still didn’t want to seek care. He says his neighbor at the time noticed he “didn’t look right,” and told the building’s security guard to call 911.
