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The Squaw Valley Ski Patrol delivers an injured snowboarder into the caring hands of the Truckee Tahoe Medical Group's Dr. Gregg Paul at the medical group's slopeside office. photo by Seth Lightcap |
CommentsFrom House Calls to Household Name
Truckee Tahoe Medical Group celebrates 50 years of caring
Published: March 13, 2009by Susan McCormick
Around the turn of the 20th century, Truckee became a winter sports hotbed for skating, skiing and tobogganing. But when the Olympics arrived in 1960, Truckee was still a small, undeveloped mountain town primarily known for the Donner Party, railroad construction and lumber production. As Squaw Valley founder Alex Cushing was preparing for the Games, he convinced his Harvard classmate, Dr. Gardner Pier, to move to the area and practice medicine here. In 1959, Dr. Pier and his colleagues Dr. Doug Brody and Dr. Ben King formed the Truckee Tahoe Medical Group in Squaw Valley, working with minimal resources to service the small community. Fifty years later, Truckee is a magnet for recreationalists, and TTMG is flourishing with seven doctors, two nurse practitioners, one physician assistant and four offices in Truckee, Tahoe City, Squaw Valley and Northstar.
The main primary care medical group on the North Shore, TTMG provides urgent and preventative care, internal and family medicine, sports medicine, minor surgery, and pediatric and geriatric care.
TTMG has stayed true to its small town roots while continually improving on its services, facilities and staff. Though the days of transporting patients to surgery in the backs of cars and snowshoeing in for house calls have passed, TTMG continues to emphasize the human element, caring for whole families from newborns to the elderly. “We try to maintain that small-town feeling, where people feel like we are their ‘family’s doctor’ who knows them well and whom they can rely on. I have patients everyday who say proudly that Dr. Englesby (who retired in 2007) has always been my doctor,” says Dr. Reini Jensen. “He delivered my babies!” Although no longer delivering babies, TTMG doctors still do pediatric care starting right after birth in the hospital.
Family medicine primary care can be one-stop where you can get your broken arm put in a cast, remove the mole that might be skin cancer, get your child’s flu shot, and make sure that you are doing preventative medicine to stay healthy. “There are things a family physician can figure out because they know a lot of the dynamics that are going on not just medically, but psycho-socially,” explains TTMG’s Dr. Gina Barta.
“I wanted to work with other doctors who cared about serving all their patients as their neighbors and friends as much as the quality of their medical knowledge. At TTMG, I found doctors and nurse practitioners who truly care about the entire community and have high standards for quality in our medical practice,” explains Dr. Jensen who joined the group in 2004.
Over his 32 years at TTMG, Dr. Charlie Kellermeyer ushered TTMG from its primitive roots to its modern incarnation. In 1969 Dr. Kellermeyer stopped in Tahoe “for a year” on his way to Vail. Dr. Ed Wilkins, who had joined in the mid ‘60s, convinced him to stay and join TTMG. After a year, Dr. Kellermeyer was running the group. “Charlie truly emphasized the patient and he was always very empathetic,” says Dr. Barta. “With some really distraught patients, he would just sit there and cry with them.”
It used to be difficult to attract good physicians. “Doctors weren’t interested in lifestyle, they were interested in opportunity,” explains Dr. Kellermeyer. As Truckee has grown it has become easier to attract the best and TTMG has become highly selective. Current doctors have been trained at UC Davis, UCLA, Stanford, Georgetown, and University of Nevada, Reno.
Bunny Martin, a family nurse practitioner, recently retired from TTMG after 45 years. “Back in the '‘60’s patients would call us at home to make special appointments that fit their schedules, and we would come to them instead of making them drive the treacherous unplowed roads,” she remembers. The ambulance was an old hearse with an eccentric driver and Martin once took a dogsled to work as a surgery nurse. “It was wilderness medicine,” she recalls.
“At the end of the day, after 50 x-rays, we would put our feet up on the desks and have a glass of wine,” reminisces Jody Scowcroft, who joined the group in 1967 as an x-ray technician. “If you ever needed anything, if your son was sick, they were here for you.”
Back in the early days, Scowcroft and Martin were the only women in the group. Now there are four female doctors: Dr. Barta, Dr. Jensen, Dr Jeanne Plumb, and Dr. Erin Winter. TTMG doctors are on medical staff at Tahoe Forest Hospital, continuing to take care of patients when they are admitted. TTMG’s Director, Dr. Richard Ganong, who has been with the group for 30 years, is now Chief of Staff at the hospital.
Over 50 years, TTMG’s sports medicine program has evolved alongside the sport of skiing to become nationally prominent.
The group has 12 sports medicine fellows who work in its offices during the winter to train in slopeside injuries. Back when skis were long wooden planks with leather straps for bindings, TTMG saw many spiral fractures and wrist injuries from long poles. Skis got shorter and bindings became releasable, so spiral injuries were dramatically reduced and knee injuries became more common. And with the advent of snowboarding came a new set of common injuries. TTMG’s doctors stay up-to-date along with the equipment and the sport. They are on teaching faculty at UNR and UC Davis medical schools. Dr. Ganong and Dr. Paul Krause travel to Europe to work in the U.S. Alpine and Nordic Ski Teams’ physician pool. “When I travel, I frequently run into people who know of our program – from orthopedic surgeons to sports medicine doctors around the world,” says Dr. Ganong.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the group’s family mentality. “In the early days you did whatever was necessary; you were a receptionist, took x-rays, put on casts and ran blood tests,” says Joan Klaussen, who joined TTMG as a nurse in the early ‘70s and stayed for 25 years. Now TTMG sends out blood for testing and has a wider range of specialists to work with, but the spirit remains the same – complete care for the whole family in a community where health is a core value and the lifestyle helps keeps spirits high. “I loved working at TTMG,” says Scowcroft, “because people would be injured and come in with a smile on their face and a great story about how it happened.”
~ The Squaw Valley and Northstar offices are open seven days a week during the winter season. The Tahoe City and Truckee offices are open Mon. through Sat. To schedule an appointment, call 530-581-8864. For more information including doctor bios, news stories and seasonal promotions, visit ttmg.net.
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