MMA Viewpoint
Why I Serve
Keep what is best for the patient as your focal point, and your compass will seldom err.
As the new chair of the MMA Board of Trustees, I look forward to the opportunities and challenges of leading a group of talented individuals. My hope is that we will trust one another enough to be able to share our diverse perspectives and opinions about the complex and difficult decisions we need to make. Transparency is the cornerstone of trust. As leaders, we need to be open about who we are as individuals as well as why we think the way we do. So in this column, I’d like to share a bit about who I am, how I got to this point in my life, and what I hope to accomplish as board chair.
I am a family physician, and I practice at the physician-owned-and-run Family HealthServices Minnesota, which provides primary care at 13 clinics in the east metro area. My practice in White Bear Lake encompasses the full scope of family medicine, including obstetrics. Forty percent of my practice is sports/musculoskeletal medicine. I also hold a clinical appointment with the University of Minnesota and teach medical students, residents, and allied health professionals.
I grew up in a medical family, which has a lot to do with why I chose to practice medicine and how I approach this work. I was raised in south Minneapolis, the second son of Stuart and Dorothy Thorson. My father was a family physician, and as a child, I tagged along on many of his house calls. During high school, I worked in his clinic. Over the ensuing years, I also worked as an orderly at Deaconess and Midway hospitals, a paramedic, and a death scene investigator in the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s office. I eventually ended up at the University of Minnesota Medical School and graduated in 1985.
By then, my father had become chief of the family medicine residency program at Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC), which is where I did my residency. I had always known how much his patients respected and loved him, but during residency I had a chance to learn why—he listened to them, respected them, and always put their needs first. I learned hands-on diagnostic skills from him and, even more importantly, how to listen to patients.
During residency, Rob Johnson, M.D., and I worked with HCMC to develop one of the first sports medicine fellowships in the country. In 1989, I completed my year of fellowship training in sports medicine.
Around that same time, I became interested in organized medicine. Again, it was my father’s influence that started me in that direction. He and I used to go to American Academy of Family Physicians meetings together. He was an MMA member and a founding member and president of the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians (MAFP). I continued along that path, inherently understanding the importance of physicians banding together to influence what happens in and to our profession. Eventually, I too served as president of the MAFP in 1997. My personal philosophy about leadership is based on advice I received from my father: Keep what is best for the patient as your focal point, and your compass will seldom err.
Now, as chair of the MMA’s Board of Trustees, I plan to continue to put the needs of our patients first. There will be discussions and disagreements about how to do that. But if we keep that goal in mind, we can achieve consensus and develop strong positions that will not only improve health care in Minnesota but also make the state a beacon for the rest of the nation. Thank you for putting your trust in me. I’m looking forward to working together to make a difference for our patients and for the medical profession.