Late-Blooming Physician Starts New Career Helping Iowa’s Underserved

Roger Hansen, D.O., is a man who loves to try new things, including different careers—and he has earned the academic credentials to go with them. Hansen served in the Navy, and—at various times—was a teacher, an insurance executive, and a paramedic. He earned two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. along the way.

“I had always wanted to get into medicine and had done all the pre-med courses,” he says. “One day, I just decided to apply.” Hansen passed the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) handily, and enrolled in the Des Moines University College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery in Iowa. “I started med school at age 48,” he notes.

He was interested in getting involved in rural health care. “Underserved rural areas are fun because they really like you there,” Hansen explains. “It’s not like in a big city where you’re involved in assembly-line medicine.”

However, Hansen didn’t want to unduly hamper his wife’s career in Des Moines as a professor of nursing at Drake University. “As it turned out, she was perfectly willing to move,” he found, and so Hansen began his new medical career in 1999 at the Panora Medical Clinic in rural Guthrie County, about 50 miles west of the city.

He made the decision partly because Panora is an NHSC-approved location, which meant help with Hansen’s medical student loans. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have been paid off until I was 75!” he laughs. The NHSC Loan Repayment Program fit the bill perfectly.

Since Hansen’s arrival, there has been a shift in the makeup of the clinic’s patient population. When he started, about 75 percent of his patients were elderly individuals on Medicare. Nowadays, 60 percent have other types of insurance—with roughly 30 percent on Medicaid—and reflect an increasingly younger cohort of families and children.

That shift reflects Hansen’s efforts to reach out and accommodate families in his practice. “We stay open until 8:00 p.m. Monday through Thursdays and also are open on Saturday mornings,” he explains. The relationship usually begins with Hansen treating a pediatric patient, “and then mom comes along to where the kids go, and then dad comes along when he has to.”

Hansen is pleased that “we have four generations of some families who we treat, which is something you can never get in a large community.”

He and his full-time physician assistant see 25-40 patients a day at the clinic, providing the full gamut of family practice services. Hansen also sees obstetrics patients but turns them over to OB/GYNs when they are 20 weeks into their pregnancies. The clinic also has the services of a podiatrist and an internist, both of whom come in once a month.

His other responsibilities include serving as director of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) for Guthrie and Greene Counties. This role builds upon Hansen’s previous experience as a paramedic. He conducts four training sessions a year for the local EMS teams. “It gives me a chance to see how the teams are doing,” he says. “I also interview new advanced care providers to make sure they’re going to work out well.”

Hansen is also fully engaged with community activities in Panora, including staffing a booth at the town’s annual “Panorama Days” celebration. He says he even agrees to sit in the “dunk tank” at the fair, “so I get dunked every summer!” Hansen finds that when people realize you’re going to stay and are committed to the town, they will really support you.

In return, the clinic tries to do as much as possible to support the town. “At Thanksgiving, we select one of our patient families who is having some trouble that year,” he says. “We’ll provide a complete, cooked turkey dinner. We arrive at the house, present the turkey—it’s hot and the mashed potatoes and fixings are all done. We do that same thing at Christmas.”

Hansen’s skill and compassion have won him a cherished role in Panora. “When a stranger comes into town and is injured or sick, wherever they are, they get recommended to come to us,” he notes. “We’re the place to come when you’re sick and that’s a really good feeling.”

He proudly notes that his wife, Mary Mincer Hansen, was recently appointed by Iowa’s governor to be director of the State Department of Public Health. “She signs my medical license,” Hansen laughs, but he says she sometimes disagrees with him on medical issues. Joking aside, he adds, “She’s pleased with the way the clinic is going, and the acceptance that we’ve received here in the town.”