Doctors at UHS: A Changing Breed

Dr. Firmon E. Hardenbergh, chief of opthamology at the University Health Services (UHS), traveled a circular path in reaching his current post.

He attended Harvard Medical School, studied under former UHS Director Dr. Dana Farnsworth, and did his residency in Boston. In fact, UHS offered him a job in 1962. He turned it down, and moved to Colorado.

In 1989, UHS called him again. This time he accepted, he says, because the timing was right and he liked the idea of working with a diverse population of students, faculty and staff. "It's an unusual group of people," Hardenbergh says.

Until about 20 years ago, college health services were staffed almost exclusively by elderly, male, part- time doctors at the end of their careers.

But in the past two decades, according to Dr. Norman Spack, a Chestnut Hill physician and expert in adolescent and young- adult health issues, student health services have experienced a revolution. And no where is that more apparent than in the differing backgrounds of the doctors who staff places like the University Health Services.

"There's been an incredible change in the University Health Services from the days when I was in college," says spack. "Now, people train specifically for this kind of work."

Dr. Kenneth Gold, for example, knew he wanted to go into internal medicine at a place like UHS. And after completing his residency at Boston City Hospital in 1988, he chose UHS over similar organizations because it "seemed friendlier to me."

"Since this is an HMO, you don't have a lot of those billing and paperwork headaches because we have people to do that," says Gold. "The patient population is actually very stimulating. You have Nobel Prize winning professors, and you have inner city minorities who may work on the staff.

Some doctors sat they work at UHS because of the values inherent in its system.

"I was looking for a place with a variety of patients and a group of doctors I could interact with," says Dr. Karen E. Victor '80, an internist who came to UHS in 1988. "I wanted a place where I wasn't going to have to discriminate against people based on their insurance or income."

For Dr. Robert Fasciano, who has spent 30 years at UHS, working at the health service was like coming home. He attended Somerville High, Tufts University for college and Harvard Dental School. And he had often played basketball in the Malkin Athletic Center.

"I have always been attracted to working with large groups of dentists, where you could share ideas," Fasciano says.

But for other doctors, comign to UHS is a career change. Dr. Mary Wolfman, a primary care physician at UHA, worked at a psychiatric hospital in Alaska before her interests changed and she considered a career in a broader kind of medicine. Dr. Ronald Matloff, now chief of dermatology, had just finished residency when he went ot UHS. Matloff, who has a private practice in West Roxbury and also practices in Brockton, says the health service has a special relationship with the health service because so many of its doctors practice elsewhere in the area.

"Most doctors live here in Cambridge, or very near," says Matloff. "And many work elsewhere in Cambridge. It's excellent in access to a wide variety of services."

But despite all the different reasons, UHS, for many doctors, remains what it was 30 years ago- a nice place to wind up a career.

Dr. Sidney Wanzer, now the director of the UHS satellite clinic at Harvard Law School, left his private practice in Concord, where he'd spent most of his career, to come to the health service.

"I came because I wanted to do something different," says Wanzer. "My patient population used to be Medicare patients. Now they're obviously younger patients. I really enjoy the different kind of medicine I'm doing."

"I've been very happy here," he says.