Cardio doc gets fond farewell

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November 12, 2010 - 12:00 AM

Dr. Gregory Duick counseled the last of about 18,000 patients he has seen at Allen County Hospital late Thursday afternoon. He has conducted cardiology clinics at ACH twice each month since June 1979.
Duick, 64, is retiring from seeing patients through his Cardiovascular Consultants of Kansas, Wichita, clinic. He soon will assume new duties as chairman and president of Kansas Heart Hospital, a short stroll from his Wichita clinic.
“I’ll do strategic planning, work on relations with rural areas, such as Iola, and be the hospital’s governmental liaison,” Duick said. “It will be a full-time position. I’ll be wearing a different hat but I won’t be getting out of medicine.”
His experience is among the most wide-ranging of any Kansas doctor involved in cardiovascular care.
Duick said he had done over 20,000 cardio catheterizations and “thousands of intervention procedures” since being graduated from Loyola University of Chicago’s Stritch School of Medicine in 1972. His internship, residency and a fellowship were at Los Angeles County’s University of Southern California Medical Center before moving to Wichita in 1977.
He then opened Cardiovascular Consultants of Kansas among a covey of medical clinics on Webb Road in 1984.
Duick’s retirement will not mean a loss of cardiovascular clinic services at ACH, rather an increase from twice to four times a month. His associates, Drs. Layne Reusser and Michael Lloyd, will see patients at ACH, each twice a month.

DUICK meandered through his years at ACH during a Thursday mid-afternoon reception in the Medical Arts Building adjacent to ACH.
He noted many stories of patients and experiences could be told, and that “there are some stories that can’t be told,” for propriety reasons.
Allen County’s resounding decision at the polls Nov. 2 to pass a countywide quarter-cent sales tax as the financial trigger for a new Allen County Hospital wasn’t lost on Duick.
“It’s a wonderful thing for the people of Allen County,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you what it will mean in recruiting doctors and medical staff, as well as business and industry.”
Earlier he told the Register a new hospital would be a “real positive” for the community and was made essential by competitive medical facilities in Burlington, Fort Scott and Chanute that had had substantial upgrades in recent years.
Three recurring things tell a doctor he is getting old, Duick concluded.
“You know when people start getting out of your way; they start calling you distinguished, just before you’re extinguished; and you see a 60-year-old patient and he tells you about you having seen his grandfather.”

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