Healthcare Foundation Awards Fall Scholarships
August 8, 2014First Certified Nurse Midwife Joins Staff at TCMH
August 21, 2014Linda Milholen, MD grew up in rural America—35 miles west of Hot Springs, AR, to be precise.
Milholen knows what it’s like when there is only one doctor in town. As a teenager, Milholen babysat for the county doctor when he and wife went out for their weekly bowling outing.
“It was not uncommon for the doctor to come home to five or six people waiting to be seen in cars in the driveway,” Milholen explained. “I would triage the patients in advance before the doctor got home.”
Although Milholen didn’t set out from high school to become a doctor, those teenage years spent working for the county doctor and a post-high school job spent working with oral surgeons prepared her for a future that would take her down the path of hospitals, operating rooms and anesthesia.
Milholen’s husband, Bruce, has been a key figure in her life. They met when she was 3 and he 6. They married three weeks after Linda Milholen graduated from high school.
Both Milholens attended Georgia Institute of Technolgy in Atlanta. Bruce Milholen pursued a degree in engineering, and Linda Milholen studied applied mathematics.
“I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do when I started college,” Milholen said, explaining that applied mathematics was the ‘general degree’ for undeclared students at Georgia Tech.
The Milholens both held full-time jobs while attending college, and due to her previous healthcare experience, Linda Milholen got a job as a tech in a local operating room.
“Within nine months I was scrubbing in on open heart surgeries,” Milholen said. She continued her studies in math at Georgia Tech, taking as many science electives as possible with plans of attending medical school after graduation.
Milholen continued to work in the OR through four years of medical school at Emory University in Atlanta. While in medical school she knew she wanted to practice medicine as a surgeon.
After medical school Milholen’s internship year was spent at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, LA, and she completed her general surgery residency at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.
While doing an endoscopy residency rotation at a small hospital outside of Louisville, Milholen learned that the hospital—Fort Logan Hospital in Stanford, KY—was seeking a full-time general surgeon. Milholen took the position. During that time, she also worked on active staff at Garrard County Memorial Hospital in Lancaster, KY and Casey County Hospital in Liberty, KY.
Milholen recalled a time that one hospital had a patient that had been trampled by a horse and another hospital several miles away needed her assistance with a patient requiring a Caesarean section.
“I saw the patient that had been trampled and ordered tests; while waiting for the tests to come back, I traveled to the other hospital to do the C-section,” Milholen said, adding “Everyone had a great outcome.”
Milholen didn’t mind splitting her time between communities.
“It wasn’t difficult to drive from one to the other to take care of patients,” Milholen said.
Milholen cared for patients in multiple hospitals for 22 years until financial pressures forced one hospital to close. Milholen learned of a job opening at Citizen’s Memorial Hospital in Bolivar, and she and Bruce relocated to Southern Missouri.
Milholen practiced in Bolivar for several years until her partner retired. Not wanting to practice on her own in Bolivar, Milholen took a position with St. Francis Hospital in Mountain View in 2009, where she worked until July of this year.
Milholen learned that Texas County Memorial Hospital was looking for a general surgeon in the spring of this year, and she inquired about the position.
“This is a good, solid community hospital,” Milholen said about TCMH.
TCMH extended a contract to Milholen, and she began full-time employment at the hospital on July 28.
“Wes shares my vision for providing healthcare services in rural America,” Milholen said about TCMH chief executive officer, Wes Murray. “We are here to provide a service that people need.”
Milholen explained that many patients cannot afford to or may not have a way to travel to Springfield or Rolla for surgical services.
“Even people that can travel to larger hospitals for surgery are better served by having their surgery locally,” Milholen said. “They can be taken care of by people that know them, and they are close to home.”
Milholen noted that in her years in healthcare, the hospital is “a vital part of the community”, especially in small communities.
“A hospital is a good employer in a community, and it’s a vital component to attract industry to a community,” Milholen said, describing TCMH as “a fine little hospital”.
As a general surgeon at TCMH, Milholen will do laparoscopic and open surgery and upper and lower endoscopy. Milholen has special interest in breast surgery, and she does ultrasound guided breast biopsy and breast conserving surgery. She removes skin lesions and does skin grafts.
Milholen’s clinic office is located inside TCMH in a newly remodeled area, the Outpatient Surgery Clinic. The outpatient clinic is outfitted with a procedure room for small surgical procedures, and the new clinic location gives Milholen easy access to the hospital’s surgery department and hospital inpatients.
The Milholens are relocating to Houston with their two cats, Gabby and Sprinkles.
Bruce Milholen is a self-employed electrical engineer, and he works regularly at Truman Medical Center, too.
When Linda Milholen isn’t working, she enjoys reading and needlework. She practices tai chi and is interested in finding a local tai chi group.
Milholen recently began serving as the priest at Church of the Transfiguration in Mountain Grove, her home parish since moving to the area in 2009.
Milholen grew up as Methodist, but as a teenager, she had a very positive experience at an Episcopal funeral service. Milholen joined an Episcopal church after completing her residency. She was ordained as a deacon in the Episcopal Church in 1996.
“I had no intention of becoming a priest,” Milholen said, but when retiring Father Brad Ellsworth, the priest at Church of the Transfiguration, approached her about the position, Milholen thought carefully about it, and ultimately went to a school for ministry in Topeka, KS.
Milholen was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church in April, and she has taken the unpaid position at the parish in Mountain Grove.
“I have strong lay leadership to help me; they know that I cannot always be available because I also need to work at the hospital,” Milholen said, explaining that the lay leaders can lead sermons and visit the sick in her absence.
Milholen describes her role and the role of others in the church as “very much the model of the early church”.
“I love these people,” Milholen said of the congregation, which “felt like home” from the first time she stepped through the church door.
Much like the congregation that she is committed to, Milholen feels a strong connection to the patients in rural Missouri.
“I grew up in a farming community,” Milholen said. “These are people I understand.”
Milholen is accepting new patients at the TCMH Outpatient Surgery Clinic at (417) 967-1252.