Research & Education
Health Care Professionals
Patients
52 Super Doctors
Thousands of reasons to celebrate
Scott & White congratulates our 2009 Super Doctors™, 52 men and women who have demonstrated superb clinical talent and personalized patient care. During their remarkable careers, they have healed and improved the lives of thousands of patients through their skill and compassion. We honor them and their dedicated service to Central Texas and beyond.
Allergy and Immunology
John C. Starr, M.D.
David Weldon, M.D.
What is the best advice you have been given?
"If you hear hoof beats, think horses. If it's a zebra, it will keep coming back to you." — Valerie Chatham, M.D. 1990. Read more 
Cardiology
Allan Anderson, M.D.
What is the best advice you have been given?
After watching a film on the heart during 8th grade science class, I knew I wanted to become a physician. I was blessed to have that opportunity, and having practiced cardiology over 25 years, I’ve been fortunate to have witnessed the explosion of new knowledge and innovative therapies to prevent and treat cardiovascular disease. But the best advice on being an effective physician came from two nurses and a wise neurologist. My mother and my aunt, the nurses, reminded me that effective physicians always work as a part of an effective team, and that I should always seek and respect the thoughts and insights of all who share in the care of each patient. The neurologist reminded me that, in spite of all our technical advances, most of our success in treating patients is the result of the first five minutes of listening to each patient. I’m delighted to be a part of the excellent team-based, patient-centered care at Scott & White. Read more
Gregory J. Dehmer, M.D.
What do you enjoy most about your practice or specialty?
Cardiology is a very vibrant - area and is never routine. With so many different new exciting therapies becoming available, it is constantly stimulating and rewarding. I thoroughly enjoy teaching young physicians because through them, the experience I have gained over the years can help even more patients. Read more
John P. Erwin, III, M.D.
What is the best advice you have been given?
One of my medical student classmates who had spent his pre-med life as an ordained minister passed on to me the quote from Dr. Edward Trudeau: "To cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always" just after we had graduated from medical school. This has stuck with me through the years and has become more and more profound to me over time. Even in those times that we can't cure through the marvels of modern science, we can minister to the people who come to us in need of comfort and provide for them the hope of eternal healing by the ultimate Physician. Read more
D. Scott Gantt, D.O.
What is the best advice you have been given?
Make your decisions based on science, supported by a whole lot of common sense. Read more
Philip Houck, M.D.
What do you enjoy most about your practice or specialty?
In Cardiology we are working hard to put ourselves out of business. We look forward to the day when heart disease is wiped from the earth. Patients can help by remembering that they are what they eat. Exercise , exercise, exercise at least one hour per day will assure health and keep patients out of the nursing home. Read more
J. James Rohack, M.D.
What is the best advice you have been given?
The Art of Caring for Patients is Caring for Patients. Read more
James Schmitz, M.D.
What does it mean to you to be selected as a Super Doctor?
This is one of the greatest honors of my career. Although I get the credit, it is really a tribute to our entire healthcare delivery team. I could not have accomplished this without the hard work and dedication of many individuals. I appreciate all of their support. Read more
Curtis Stauffer, M.D.
What do you enjoy most about your practice or specialty?
Best thing about being a Cardiologist is the opportunity to work in a field that can help people and is dynamically growing and changing. Read more
Eugene Terry, M.D.
What does it mean to you to be selected as a Super Doctor?
One never outgrows the need for validation of ones efforts. Recognition from ones colleagues and patients is always an honor that never loses its value.
What do you enjoy most about your practice or specialty?
the opportunity to contribute to a cardiovascular team committed to a patient centered quality academic practice and participate in the teaching and therefore continuous learning experience. Read more
Linley Watson, M.D.
What do you enjoy most about your practice or specialty?
At the time of my medical school training, USA total cardiovascular mortality was 400 deaths per hundred thousand persons. Today, cardiovascular mortality has been reduced by 50%. It has been a personal privilege to participate in this reduction of cardiovascular mortality and cardiac suffering one patient at a time and to continue to teach medical students, house staff and colleagues the art of cardiovascular care. The declining cardiovascular death rates results from better access to cardiovascular technology and pharmacology. Dramatic reduction of death from heart attacks was accomplished by emergency opening of blocked coronary arteries. Impressive prevention of sudden cardiac death due rhythm disturbances is now established by implantable devices. Impressive new drugs effectively treat hypertension and lipid disorders. I enjoy most the rapid advances in cardiology. I am an optimist about the future of cell therapy for cardiovascular diseases. The best for cardiac patients is yet to come! Read more
Cardiothoracic Surgery
W. Roy Smythe, M.D.
What is the best advice you have been given?
My best piece of advice is simple, and may even seem trite.
When I was a third year resident on the transplant service at Penn, where I trained, I once asked the Division Chief how he was able to get up in the middle of the night, year after year to perform transplant surgery, as most of that work is after hours. He thought about it for a moment, and then said, "sometimes you just have to do the right thing". I remind myself of that almost every day. I think about it when I am busy with some other task and a patient or a patient's family member needs me. I think about it when I have an opportunity to do less, or more for a patient in or out of the operating room,and I think about it when I am called in the middle of the night, or on the weekend.
Sometimes, you just have to do the right thing. Read more
Cosmetic/Reconstructive Surgery
Charles N. Verheyden, M.D., Ph.D.
What do you enjoy most about your practice/specialty?
Plastic Surgery is a great discipline, because one gets to interact with patients of all ages; operate all over the body; interact with multiple other medical specialties; reconstruct body parts that have suffered from the ravages of disease, cancer or trauma; and work on people who need or want to look better. The variety is terrific and it is impossible to get bored with what we do. Read more
Raleigh R. White IV, M.D.
Dermatology
David F. Butler, M.D., B.A.
What do you enjoy most about your practice or specialty?
I enjoy being able to help patients in a unique and special way. Patients often present to dermatologists with unusual skin problems and to be able to find a way to help them is very rewarding. Read more
Ronald E. Grimwood Jr., M.D.
What do you enjoy most about your practice or specialty?
What I enjoy most about the practice of Dermatology is to be able make a diagnosis that can have a significant impact on the quality of life for our patients. Skin problems have a profound effect on patients and their families. Helping treat and solve this type of problem is very rewarding. Read more
Endocrinology
Veronica K. Piziak, M.D., Ph.D.
What is the best advice you have been given?
A physician I admire told me to always do my best to make every patient I saw feel better. Sometimes that can be done by giving medication, other patients need counseling to improve their health, but above all everyone needs to have you take the time to listen to their problems. Read more
Family Medicine
Lani Kay Ackerman, M.D.
What does it mean to you to be selected as a Super Doctor?
I am honored that my colleagues would nominate me as a super doctor. Like most family doctors, I struggle with balancing medicine and the rest of life. My prayer is that in trying to have the attitude of Christ, the Great Physician, I can still be a good physician, even though medicine is not all that consumes my waking hours. Being a doctor, to me, is not a job, it is a calling. My hope is that with care, compassion, and good clinical knowledge I can work together with my patients, their families, and other physicians to provide the best healthcare. My favorite aspect of family medicine today, as well as when I began practicing, is the opportunity to care for patients from birth to death, and to be a part of spiritual and physical healing in their lives. Read more
Mark English, M.D.
What does it mean to you to be selected as a Super Doctor?
Being selected as Super Doctor is both an honor as well as incredibly humbling. It represents, to me, a "hall of fame" honor for my entire team that try to treat each patient as one of the members of our family. I am but the face that receives this prestigious honor, yet it is the culmination of efforts of so many folks with whom I am privileged to work. I've always said that working at Scott & White Clinic makes me a better doctor than I ever would be out on my own. Finally, it is even more motivating to stay "on top of my game" because apparently more than just my patients are noticing. Read more
Donald Gehring, D.O.
What is the best advice you have been given?
An old country doctor was trying to make a point one day on hospital rounds. His assertion was that we as physicians are too quick to speak, too impatient to listen, and too quick to order tests. He urged me to be patient, shut up, and put myself in the patient's shoes. His point was that if I were to take this approach, 70 % of the time the patient would tell me exactly what the problem was, and that I would be a better doctor. He was right. Read more
Robert Wiprud, M.D.
What does it mean to you to be selected as a Super Doctor?
Being named to Texas Super Docs is quite an honor and means more to me because it is from my peers. I think it may mean consistency over time caring for patients and support staff. Read more
Gastroenterology
Andrejs E. Avots-Avotins, M.D., Ph.D.
What do you enjoy most about your practice or specialty?
I was attracted to gastroenterology by the opportunity to develop long term relationships with patients and to provide needed interventions to prevent, diagnose and intervene in gastrointestinal disorders. Read more
Richard A. Erickson, M.D.
What is the best advice you have been given?
The best advice I've ever gotten about being a physician is to "put yourself in your patient's place." While it is never really possible to experience all that your patient is going through, I try to imagine what they must be experiencing at the time they see me. Often times they have just been confused by the overwhelming complexity of our healthcare system and only need someone to untangle all the things that have happened to them. I love to hear from my patients that "no doctor has ever just sat down and listened to me and then explained why I've gone through all these test and what they mean." Even though I may understand their condition from a medical perspective, I try to imagine the anxiety they must be feeling in sometimes very frightening situations. I want to give my patients a sense of reassurance that I will do my very best to care for them and figure out what is going on with them so that we can get on with the most appropriate treatment. Read more
Timothy Pfanner, M.D.
Joseph G. White, M.D.
What does it mean to you to be selected as a Super Doctor?
I think being selected as a “Super Doctor” means I’m doing the best I can to help every patient. I also work with a “super team.” We are dedicated first and foremost to “patient care.” My team and I strive to use the latest tools and technology to diagnose and treat each individual case. I am certainly honored to receive this recognition. Read more
Internal Medicine
Phillip T. Cain, M.D.
Bruce D. Koehler, M.D.
Neurology
Jeffrey Clark, D.O.
Richard P. Lenehan, M.D.
Obstestrics/Gynecology
Dudley P. Baker, M.D.
What do you enjoy most about your practice or specialty?
I enjoy working with a wonderful team of health care professionals to provide personalized care to our patients. I appreciate our patients and families who put their trust in us to work as partners in a commitment to maintain and improve their health and life goals. Read more
Charles V. Capen, M.D.
William Rayburn, M.D.
Bob L. Shull, M.D.
Charles Sanders, M.D.
Ophthalmology
Glen O. Brindley, M.D.
R. Doug Davis, M.D.
What is the best advice you have been given?
In the practice of medicine, always remember that the needs and interests of the patient should be priority number one. Everything else will then tend to fall into it's own place. Keeping this precept in mind will keep you between the ditches during your privileged career of caring for others. Read more
J. Paul Dieckert, M.D.
What do you enjoy most about your practice or specialty?
Vitreoretinal surgery provides me with a way to assist persons who have reached a dangerous place in their lives. The intensity and life changing risks challenge me to creatively intervene in order to optimize visual function for persons who are in danger of losing most if not all of their vision. Read more
Samuel Fulcher, M.D.
What do you enjoy most about your practice or specialty?
I enjoy taking care of people more than anything else, and the environment at Scott and White allows me to do just that. I am surrounded by fantastic people who feel the same who make it possible for me to do my job... this is a team effort all the way! Read more
Robert H. Rosa Jr., M.D.
What do you enjoy most about your practice or specialty?
Interacting with my patients and helping them to improve and restore the precious gift of vision. Read more
Kyle Smith, M.D.
What do you enjoy most about your practice or specialty?
I am blessed beyond measure to have the opportunity as an ophthalmologist to help people experience God's creation and enjoy more productive and fulfilling lives through better vision Read more
Orthopedic Surgery
Bill Hamilton, M.D.
What does it mean to you to be selected as a Super Doctor?
I am humbled by this award. It means that all of the doctors selected for this honor have tried to do the right thing for our patients and tried to alleviate a little of the suffering and disability that accompanies disease and illness. This is the reason we all went in the medical field in the first place. The best advice I have ever received is always try to put the patient first. Try to do what is right for the patient and most of the other problems associated with medicine will work themselves out.
My specialty allows me to see patients that have pain and/ or debility that is a lot of times capable of being cured. I derive the most satisfaction from patients that I have been able to see and treat either surgically or nonsurgically, and have gotten better. I am blessed to have patients that are hard-working and motivated to get better and with the help I am able to give them and their own hard work they usually improve and in some cases are pretty close to normal at the end of the treatment episode. Read more
Kirby D. Hitt, M.D.
Robert A. Probe, M.D.
What do you enjoy most about your practice or specialty?
The practice of Orthopaedic Trauma provides a unique opportunity to work in partnership with patients to achieve the best results possible following accidents. Optimal recovery from fractures often requires skillful surgery but always depends on an educated patient contributing their efforts toward this goal. It is always a pleasure to form a bond with recovering patients and help guide them through their healing process. Read more
Pediatrics
Daniel G. Ransom, M.D.
Psychiatry
Michael L. Brown, M.D.
William J. Meek, M.D.
Reproductive Endocrinology
Jose F. Pliego, M.D.
Thomas J. Wincek, M.D., Ph.D.
Trauma/Critical Care
Randall Smith, M.D.
Urology
T. Philip Reilly, M.D.
Vascular Surgery
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