ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 28, 1996 TAG: 9601260007
SECTION: ECONOMY PAGE: 9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY
At 8:34 a.m., Dr. Bert Spetzler has already removed a screw from the shoulder of a college student where it had been put months before to aid the healing of a broken bone.
After that, he literally runs from the clinic into the patient area of Lewis-Gale Hospital to visit a woman whose hip he replaced a few days before.
Every time he leaves the clinic's operating suite to see patients in the hospital, which he does whenever he has 10 or 15 minutes, he puts a white doctor's coat over his blue operating room shirt and pants.
By the time he pauses for lunch - wolfed down in about a half-hour - he will have used an orthroscope to repair a knee on several patients - "softball and high heels keep us busy" - operated on a man who had a foot problem and a woman who had carpal tunnel syndrome and performed a biopsy on a tumor in the arm of a woman.
In between surgeries, he dictates notes on the procedure just completed, draws a picture of it on the patient's chart and signs his name on forms while seated at a desk in the recovery room. That way he can say hello to patients who are waking up and getting ready to go home.
"I'm overpaid for what I do," says Spetzler, who has been a surgeon for 15 years. "It's a privilege."
About 1:30 in the afternoon, he's in his office seeing the first of 19 patients before he heads for a 4:30 board meeting of Habitat for Humanity, the group that builds housing for the poor. Habitat is one of Spetzler's pet projects.
Work life is changing for him, however. A few days before, surgery that an insurance company had approved for one of his patients was canceled when the insurer decided the surgery wasn't necessary.
There's more bureaucracy everywhere, he says. The new Family Leave law means he is asked to write "permission" notes to employers explaining that a family member needs time off from work to be with an ill relative.
LENGTH: Short : 45 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Wayne Deel. Bertram "Bert" Spetzler\Orthopedic Surgeon,by CNBLewis-Gale Clinic, Salem. color.