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News Article
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El Paso Orthopaedic Group celebrates 70 years
By Robert Gray
When it opened for patients in 1939, it had just six doctors.
Today, the El Paso Orthopaedic Group has grown to 27 physicians, 200 employees, four clinics and one specialty hospital. More than 136,000 patients were seen last year, and this year’s patient volume is up 10 percent.
That’s some of the growth and history that’s being remembered as the El Paso Orthopaedic Surgery Group celebrates its 70th anniversary this month.
“The teamwork and the collaboration among the physicians themselves is what keeps us going,” said the group’s CEO, Mitch McBeth, who’s headed the group since 2005.
“If you look around the country, it is difficult to find physicians in that number who can work together, and keep something consistently moving in one direction,” he said.
The group’s physicians serve as official team doctors for University of Texas at El Paso athletics, and travel with the football team during the season.
It also has affiliations with UTEP’s School of Nursing and Texas Tech’s Paul L. Foster School of Medicine to provide students with learning experiences.
Michael Fallon, 44, a general orthopaedic surgeon, joined the group last year.
“I knew this place and I knew the partners in this group from my training days at William Beaumont Army Hospital and I was impressed,” Fallon said.
He’s not wearing a white coat, but rather jeans, boots, a suit jacket and tie. Recruiting physicians like Fallon to this area, McBeth said, continues to be difficult.
“We’ve been able to do it,” he said, “because we have a nice package to offer them with a nice lifestyle and peers to work with them.”
It’s those peers to work with, Fallon said, that’s part of why he joined the group.
“What I like about being here, and some of the best experiences for me, are just walking down the hallway and talking to a partner who has oodles of years of experience and asking them what they think about a case I am working on,” he said.
The hospital’s history and much of its most recent growth is tied to the military.
Louis Breck, who trained at the Mayo Clinic and served as a medical officer during World War II, founded the group.
As the city grew, so did the group and its specialties, which now include pain management, pediatric orthopaedics, neurosurgery, physical medicine and rehabilitation, general orthopaedics, spine surgery and total joint replacement.
As Fort Bliss grows, the group is looking to recruit more physicians. It recently added office space for two new physicians in the Northeast office.
“We’re actively recruiting general orthopaedic surgeons. We need another orthopaedic spine surgeon. We are also looking for a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon,” McBeth said. “We’ve seen significant growth on the Eastside of El Paso as well as in the Northeast, with the growth on Bliss.”
The physicians group owns El Paso Specialty Hospital. There is uncertainty about how proposed health care reform would change that. The bill passed by the House would put restrictions on and phase out physician-owned hospitals. A Senate bill that’s made it out of committee would prevent new physician-owned hospitals from receiving Medicare.
“Companies like us channel a tremendous amount of resources into new technology, and that could be put at risk if there are significant cuts in Medicare spending,” McBeth said.
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