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CAMDEN – Dr. Lowell Ozment had always wanted to be a physician, but after graduating from the University of Illinois, other things came first, like his family and two young sons.

But Ozment got a second chance, he explained. "I was out of school nearly 10 years before I went to medical school. I graduated from Little Rock and I practiced one year in Mississippi, but I wanted to come back to Arkansas and one of my classmates was here … so he encouraged me to come and I've been here ever since."

Ozment's route to medical school wasn't typical of most doctors, but his story has a twist.

"They weren't drafting men with children at that time," Ozment said. And by draft, Ozment doesn't mean Vietnam or Korea.

"I had been accepted and I was waiting to get the call," he said. "But Roosevelt had an order that said since the war looked like it was coming to an end, not to draft any men with children."

That's Franklin Roosevelt, and it was World War II.

"The opportunity just presented itself," Ozment said. "That was an off year or two for medical schools, so it was pretty easy to get in. And I had all my pre-meds at the University of Illinois … so I was accepted at Arkansas and my wife worked as a lab and EK technician and it was four wonderful years."

Ozment and his wife Catherine have three children: Steven, Kerry and a daughter, Becky Jordan.

"My oldest son is 68 and a professor at Harvard (Steven is the McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History) and he's been a professor there for 25, 30 years," Ozment said. "My other son (Kerry) just retired, but he was a bariatric surgeon in Little Rock."

Retired before his father?

"Yeah, that's another oddity," Ozment said, with a laugh. "And my daughter, she's an RN."

The Early Years
Ozment spent his first year in Mississippi and, "I came here in late '51, or early '52, I don't really recall," so that makes the rest of his medical career all in Camden, all 55 years.

Not surprisingly, Ozment has seen some changes.

"When I first came to Camden, office visits were $2, house visits were $5," he said. "Now, for a routine office visit, I charge $50 but in the big cities, I don't know what they charge."

The changes have not all been economic.

"I'm primarily interested in cardiology," Ozment said. "You may know Bruce Murphy, he's a very close, personal friend of mine, and he was born and reared down here in Stephens, but he's probably, in my opinion, the best interventional cardiologist in Arkansas. So the greatest changes for cardiology in Arkansas have been bypass surgery, and Dr. Murphy was the first cardiologist in Arkansas to use stents. Those were the two big changes."

The general practice of medicine in the early 1950s still dealt with diseases that, for the most part, no longer exist in America.

"When we were seniors in medical school, [tuberculosis] was still big," Ozment said. "And then you had to spend two weeks at the sanatorium in Booneville, but all the sanatoriums around the country have closed now that we have drugs to treat TB."

The same is true for other diseases.

"I used to treat polio patients, but with the Salk vaccine, polio was really stamped out," he said. "You don't hear about polio in this country anymore."
That isn't all, of course.

"(There have been) some great changes, as the years have gone by, in the imaging techniques," Ozment said. "Wonderful new changes in the scans and so forth. Technology has been the key in all this development."

How About Now?
Ozment stays busy, despite closing in on his 93rd birthday. He still sees about 10 patients a day and continues to make rounds.

"I was just out at the nursing home to make rounds," Ozment said. "I just do it all."

Ozment's long career in medicine nearly came to an end.

"The bugaboo, when you get my age," he said, "is the high price of malpractice insurance you have to pay. The insurance companies don't have any data on doctors my age on writing insurance for malpractice."

Ozment had been with St. Paul, but they left Arkansas, so he was forced to look for another carrier.

"My insurance was getting close to expire," he said. "But I got a fax from Lloyd's of London, $21,000 a year for my malpractice."

Ozment has since changed carriers and said his yearly premium is down from that, not that it matters.

"No insurance company has ever paid out any malpractice suit against me," he said. "I'm pretty proud of that."

Ozment still keeps up with his continuing education as mandated by the Arkansas State Medical Board.

"I think the license requires 20, 22 credits a year," he said. "I had 42 credits, 42 hours of post-graduate work last year."

Due to an eye condition, Ozment relies on audio digest tapes from Johns Hopkins. He said Dr. Murphy and Arkansas Heart Hospital also send out audio tapes.

Ozment keeps up not because he has to, but also because he wants to.

"I still have a full-time practice, hospital, ICU, all of it," he said. "The people I treat, I want to do as much for them as I am able. I feel like if you have mental and physical capabilities … and if you feel like you have a purpose in what you are doing and if you can still help people, then you should."
The retirement question still comes up, though.

"I give several speeches during the year and that's always a question, 'When are you going to retire?' and I always tell them that as long as I have the mental and physical capabilities, I'll keep practicing. I like to practice medicine."


April 2007

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