SILVER CITY DOCS
David Friedman, M.D. General Surgeon WRITTEN BY KATE McGRAW I PHOTOGRAPHED BY MARK ERICKSON
There’s a new general surgeon at Gila Regional Medical Center – who isn’t actually all that new. David Friedman, M.D. has been in Silver City as a (temporary) surgeon locum for the last year when he was asked to make it permanent. He was delighted. “Gila Regional is larger than a small community hospital, and has some sub-specialty services like cardiology and medical and radiation oncology,” he notes. “We probably have a catchment area of 50,000 to 60,000 people and within that the local medical community offer OB-Gyn, trauma stabilization, ENT, orthopedics, pulmonary care, interventional pain management and physiatry (rehab), urology, general surgery, podiatry, ophthalmology, on-site pathology services, dermatology, behavioral health services, infectious diseases, as well as inpatient hospitalist services. That’s a gamut of what you’d expect in a larger area, plus the medical community here offers excellent primary care.” A graduate of Tufts University Medical School, and with a surgical residency at Marshall University School of Medicine under his belt, he has practiced in many different geographic areas and types of practices in his 27-year career, including stints for the Indian Health Service in Gallup and Phoenix. More recently, he practiced in Las Cruces and then Albuquerque with a year’s service as a trauma surgeon for the State Department in Iraq. Silver City has a natural attraction for him—he’s an outdoorsman who loves to hike in the Gila. “I like Silver City’s rural location, abutting the Gila Wilderness, and that it’s also an arts community and also a university community,” he says. 40 – SILVER CITYLIFE