ALUMNI PROFILES
David McDermott,
MD, MPH, CPE, FAAFP
(Graduated in February 2008)
Medical Director of Emergency Services at Mayo Regional Hospital in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine
I am a family physician by training now working full-time in Emergency Medicine.
I am the Medical Director of Emergency Services at Mayo Regional Hospital, a 25-bed critical access hospital in the heart of the Maine Highlands. I graduated from the University of Rochester with a BA in Biology in 1982, the University of Vermont with an MD in 1986, then completed family practice residency training at the Maine Medical Center and Mercy Hospital in Portland, Maine in 1989. Following that I spent 4 years on active duty with the US Air Force, including time as an ED director in an air-transportable hospital during the first Gulf War (1990-91). I moved to Dover-Foxcroft in 1993 to build a primary care practice for the hospital. I completed my degree work for the MPH in December of 2007 and was awarded my degree in 2008. In 1999 I became the medical staff president at Mayo Regional Hospital. As such I became exposed to the management side of medicine, and began to understand some of the differences in what I needed to be able to do in helping to manage the health of populations. I took management courses through the American College of Physician Executives, and wanted to begin the process of certification as a physician executive. My time as medical staff president led to involvement with the executive committee of the Maine Medical Association, and I began rising through their leadership ranks. It was clear to me that I would need an advanced degree (either MPH or MBA) to have the credentials to effectively continue growth in this area. I was more concerned with the policy issues relating to population health than I was to the business side of medicine. I will serve the Maine Medical Association as its president this coming year.
At the same time our practice became involved in the Maine Youth Overweight Collaborative through the Maine Center for Public Health and the Maine-Harvard Prevention Research Center. I was the physician champion within the practice for our efforts; we spread the innovations and tools developed through this program to all of the primary care offices in our county, and launched a successful pilot with the public health nurses in our region to better involve them with the families dealing with youth overweight. Our participation was very effective and has helped to turn the tide on rising obesity rates in Maine’s children.
It was clear to me that the advanced degree I sought was indeed the MPH. I could have worked on an MBA or an MMM through ACPE, but the MPH resonated more with the population health issues I faced and my desire to better understand the systems in and through which health and healthcare are built and delivered in the US. I did not have the luxury of time to travel to a program in residence (my practice demands were high, my wife was returning to school for her BSN degree, we had two teenage daughters at home, and I was a five hour drive from the nearest campus offering the degree). The UMass program was ideal for me. I could work on the program at my own pace, in an asynchronous fashion, yet with a clear time table imposed by the semester schedule so that I would not become complacent and fail to finish the readings and preparing the work. The participation in the online forums offered stimulating dialogue; I really enjoyed having interactions with students who knew what the problems were as they faced them in their day-to-day jobs across the globe. The PHP courses were helpful to me as I filled in my understanding of systems issues in health and public health. I enrolled in the program in 2003.
The MPH has been helpful in my career. I was able to successfully complete the ACPE’s tutorial program last fall for physician executives, and have become board-certified as a physician executive. I believe that it gives me more credibility when I talk to physicians in Maine about health system reform, testify at the State House to legislative committees, or meet with Maine’s delegation on Capitol Hill about issues that are important to the debates about health care and health system planning locally and nationally. My focus can shift more readily from “what I need to do right here and right now for this particular patient” to the more pressing complexities of understanding system dynamics and inter-relatedness as we work within the state to improve health outcomes and apportion limited resources most effectively.
David is a member of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi which is the nation's oldest, largest, and most selective all-discipline honor society. Davidwas chosen as an member of the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society due to his academic excellence and demonstration of qualities of leadership in public health.
