Editor’s Note: Every year, the national medical group Castle Connolly produces a list of the best doctors in America. In the Memphis area, the 2026 Top Doctors List comprises more than 400 physicians representing 60 different specialties. Here, we introduce you to one of the care-givers who have been named a Top Doc time and again.
photograph courtesy midsouth obgyn
What Dr. Candace Hinote loves the most about being an OBGYN is the sense of connection she gets with her community.
“I think it’s unique from other professions,” she says. “I see such a variety of patients that my experience with the community is just different. I take care of teachers and nurses, some of the ladies that staff our jails, the third-shift workers at FedEx. I see people from all walks of life whose lives look so different than my life looks.
“It’s almost like I’m getting to see all the fibers that make the fabric of our community,” she continues, “so it gives me such a different perspective on who we are in Memphis and how unique our population is, and really how beautiful that is.”
Hinote was born in Memphis, but grew up in Florida. She is the first in her family to become a doctor, but says experiences in her early life influenced her choice of career. “I have a very strong drive to help people,” she says. “My mom has one of those kindergarten pictures of me, where you had to dress up for the thing you were going to be when you grow up, and I’m dressed up as a doctor.”
Her little brother has Down Syndrome, “and I think I grew up watching out for him and feeling like I needed to take care of him,” she says. “He just made me part of who I am.”
“This feeling I get when I say, ‘And here is your child!’ — who I have helped bring into the world — it’s the best.” — Dr. Candace Hinote
Knowing she wanted to enter the healthcare field while she attended Rhodes College, Hinote initially earned a master’s degree in epidemiology from New York Medical College. But the prospect of spending a career in a laboratory instead of treating patients pushed her into obstetrics and gynecology. After earning her M.D. from St. George’s University School of Medicine, she and her husband, Drew, moved to Memphis for her residency at The Med (now Regional One). She didn’t expect to stay here long, but “I cannot believe how quickly we formed our community here,” she says, “from the little neighborhood we lived in when we first moved to Memphis to obviously the residents. The medical community in general is very strong here because of UT.”
While practicing in an area notorious for infant and maternal mortality is always a challenge (“You don’t need to practice in Memphis if you’re uncomfortable with high-risk patients,” Hinote says), one aspect of the job never gets old: delivering babies. She estimates she’s attended to more than 2,000 births.
Hinote admits it can be grueling work that doesn’t respect holidays or schedules. “Babies aren’t like, ‘I’ll be born between 9 and 5!’” She notes that as OBGYN specialists grow older, sometimes they drop the obstetrics part, because of the challenging lifestyle.
“I just don’t think I can do that,” she says. “I don’t know what to tell you, but this feeling I get when I say, ‘And here is your child!’ — who I have helped bring into the world — it’s the best.”
