Aloha … from BetheThe doctor's no longer in
After 25 years caring for area residents,
Dr. William Minsinger retires from Gifford
Dr. Bill Minsinger retires after 25 years caring for area residents
RANDOLPH, June 23, 2009 – On a handshake and a promise, orthopedic surgeon Dr. William Minsinger committed to providing the Randolph area community 25 years of service.
Twenty-five years later, Minsinger has made good on that promise and on Friday will hang up his surgical gloves in Randolph to fulfill some hobbies for which he is passionate and for some part-time work at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction.
A Massachusetts native, Minsinger came to Vermont fresh out residency at Tufts University in Boston. Gifford Medical Center and then President Phil Levesque was looking for an orthopedic surgeon – a specialist that to this day is still hard to find in our rural region.
In one of the first community health partnerships of its kind in the area, Levesque reached out to what was then the Hitchcock Clinic, a provider group affiliated with Mary Hitchcock Hospital, to have a Hitchcock provider work at Gifford.
“He was very forward thinking in that,” Minsinger says of the late Levesque.
Minsinger had interned and was a resident at Mary Hitchcock Hospital, so it was one of the places that he interviewed. Then Hitchcock Clinic President Harry Bird told Minsinger of the opportunity at Gifford and, after a look at the area, Minsinger and wife Linda, a nurse and now Gifford vice president of patient care services, were sold.
“When Linda and I came up, I promised Phil Levesque I would do this for 25 years,” Minsinger recalls. “I shook Harry Bird’s hand as well.”
“It was a very simple arrangement. My job was to serve this community, and I had an academic appointment at a medical school,” said Minsinger, who worked for the first five years without even a contract.
Contract or no, Minsinger took his commitment to Hitchcock, Gifford and the people of this area seriously. Except for the times when he was out of town, he was on call – meaning that if an orthopedic-related emergency needed his attention day or night, he was called.
“It didn’t mean that I was in the hospital every night,” said Minsinger of Randolph Center.
But the phone has rung often.
“I’m on the lawnmower. I’m off the lawnmower,” said Minsinger of what life has been like.
Most weekends he has also been in the hospital visiting his patients following their surgeries. And, while Minsinger is the first to admit that hospital staff has worked hard to keep the calls to a minimum, occasionally there have been rather heroic efforts made to reach him.
“One time I had Emile Fredette up. He had his big tractor. He was moving dirt for me,” recalled Minsinger, who had left his pager inside and couldn’t hear the phone ring over the roar of the tractor. “So,” says Minsinger, “they sent the ambulance crew up to find me.”
Another time, during Minsinger’s second year on the job, it was a Vermont State Police trooper who scaled an un-shoveled and snow-covered flight of stairs to rap on a second story door and wake a sleeping Minsinger in the middle of the night. “One of the kids had knocked the phone off the hook,” said Minsinger, a father of three.
In turns out the incident was minor, but plenty of cases have demanded more critical care.
In 25 years, Minsinger has fixed countless broken bones, dislocated joints and other injuries. He’s cared for thousands of area residents and even for a time was part of Gifford’s trauma team that, before the advent of DHART rescue helicopter service, stabilized and helped transport patients to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center by ambulance.
The team feel, working at a small hospital and also really working as a private orthopedic practitioner are among some of the things that Minsinger will miss in retirement.
“I would really like to thank the staff here,” said Minsinger of his Gifford colleagues.
“I have found the staff to be very helpful. They have put up with my impatience over the years,” said the self-described “prickly bear.” “What I have really appreciated most is that the institution is small enough that we could focus on the patient.”
And focus on the patient Minsinger did.
“Dr. Minsinger represents the best of the best as a physician,” long-time colleague and Gifford pediatrician Dr. Lou DiNicola said. “He is competent, available and willing to help any time with any problem. He has worked as hard as possible to provide care to this community, never saying ‘no’ to a request if he was within reach.
“Dr. Minsinger would think nothing of seeing 30 patients during the day, going home to work on his house or a chapter for a book he is writing or editing, and then show up the next day to repeat it all. And no matter what, it was all done well.”
“Dr. Minsinger enthusiastically took call for orthopedic emergencies seven days a week for over 25 years – a wonderful service to the community that will be missed,” added Rochester Health Center internal medicine physician Dr. Mark Jewett, also a long-time colleague.
Indeed, focusing on patients is what Minsinger will miss most of all.
“I’ve seen a lot of people over the course of time. I’ve enjoyed the interaction with patients,” he said, noting that patient conversations were rarely all about medicine, but often about life in general.
But there are things Minsinger readily admits he will not miss about full-time practice.
Minsinger got his start in medicine at age 16. He was a nurse’s aide and then a medical technician in the operating room at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he started “taking call” at age 17. He went on to attend Northeastern University and then the Boston University School of Medicine.
In the decades since, he has watched medicine evolve.
“The burdens of medicine today are more than when I first began and first opened my practice,” said Minsinger, citing an influx of requirements to preauthorize treatments with insurance companies and compliance regulations that significantly boost hospital employee numbers and costs nationwide. “The bureaucracy that has been developed in health care … all that has been leading to the expansion in medicine.”
And, delving into the national discussion on health care reform, he said, “I don’t see that getting any better with a single-payer system, or any system.”
On a personal level, retinal detachment surgery a decade ago is also contributing to his decision to retire. While his eyesight is still good, he knows that will not always be the case, and Minsinger has plenty to do in retirement.
An avid weather observer and author, Minsinger is president of the non-profit Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory in his hometown of Milton, Mass. In February of next year, the observatory will celebrate its 125th anniversary and Minsinger is helping to plan that and a second big event: the centennial of the 1910 Harvard Boston Aeronautical Show.
He’s also an avid Civil War re-enactor who recently returned from a weekend in Gettysburg reenacting a battle by the 27th Indiana unit. Closer to home, Minsinger is part of the Vermont Civil War Hemlocks, representing the 3rd Reginald Company A of the old brigade of Vermont troops.
“I am private,” Minsinger said of his role. “I will always remain a private.”
A final interest is the railroad. A 1906 Maine Central caboose has sat untouched in his yard for years now. He plans to restore the antique in between weather observations, event planning, taking to the battlefield and working at the VA Medical Center – a job he also has done one-day-a-week, on Wednesdays, for the last 25 years.
He will remain at the VA hospital to keep his medical license current and leaves Gifford with a feeling of accomplishment.
“I feel very fortunate that I was able to complete the 25 years worth of practice,” he said last week as he and staff – medical secretary Tammy Dempsey and office manager Paula Beal – boxed up 25 years worth of patient records to be sent to Dartmouth.
Patients have already received letters from Minsinger, announcing his retirement and how to obtain their records. He notes he is pleased patients will have a local provider with whom they can transition their care. Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Stephanie Landvater joined Gifford in 2006 and a second orthopedist is expected to join the hospital in August.
Dempsey of Brookfield will stay on with Gifford and likely work with the new orthopedic surgeon. But after nearly 20 years working with Minsinger and Beal in the third floor Hitchcock clinic, the transition is a sad one. She says she will miss her colleagues “dearly.”
“He’s been a peach to work for,” she said of Minsinger. “I like our little family.”
Beal, who has worked with Minsinger all 25 years and who started at Gifford 40 years ago, will retire with Minsinger. The Bethel resident says she’ll be spending time with her grandkids in retirement and will do some medical transcription for Gifford from home.
Asked if she’ll miss Minsinger, she replies with a wink and a smile: “Some things.”
“I don’t know where I’ll get my weather.”