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FINALIST: Physician
Thomas A. Ferrara, MD, FACOG
Medical Director of Women’s and Children’s Services, Community Health Network; Medical Director of Women’s Health Services, Community Physician Network
As a medical student at Georgetown University in 1962, Thomas Ferrara wasn’t sure what kind of medicine he wanted to practice—until he decided in an instant.
He was walking down a hospital hallway when a doctor whose name he doesn’t remember pulled him aside. The doctor was about to deliver a baby, but decided to let Ferrara do the honors.
(IBJ photo/Eric Learned)“Do you know how to wash your hands for surgery?” the doctor asked. “This baby’s about to come out. You’d better catch it.”
Pressed into service without having time to think about it, Ferrara delivered the very first baby he’d ever seen born.
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is amazing.’ The kid cried, and that was it. Where do I sign up?”
“You couldn’t get away with that today,” he said. There were fewer rules back then, and the delivering mothers were asleep. But babies are the same, and by now Ferrara, 76, knows only that he’s delivered thousands of them at four hospitals in three states and Washington, D.C.
Most of the babies, though, have been delivered in Indianapolis, where Ferrara, a Cleveland native, came to do his residency at the Indiana University Medical Center. After five years there and two years delivering babies as a military volunteer in Maryland, he landed back in Indianapolis at Community Hospital (now Community Hospital East) working for a new OB-GYN practice.
It was there that he made his mark in private practice, at one point delivering about 30 babies a month.
“Nothing makes him happier than to deliver a baby,” said Jeanne Norton, his practice manager since 1981, in his Health Care Heroes nomination.
But Ferrara’s influence extends beyond his traditional patients. In the early 1990s, he was in charge of the OB portion of the family medicine residency program at Community, which was struggling to have enough deliveries and wasn’t providing its residents with consistent supervision.
The solution was the Maternity Care Center, which Ferrara founded and ran from 1992 to 2009. It served uninsured patients who couldn’t afford prenatal care and who often waited several months to be qualified by Medicaid before they could receive care. Ferrara visited churches and schools to let them know about the center, which would see anyone regardless of ability to pay.
It wasn’t long before the center was delivering 300 babies a year. Patients who otherwise would have gone without care during much of their pregnancy were served. Community’s OB residents also had plenty of deliveries to tend to, and Ferrara provided the residents with the consistent mentorship they had lacked.
“Dr. Ferrara led me through one of my first rotations and is the reason I went into OB-GYN,” said Dr. Kim Harris.
These days, Ferrara and his wife—the parents of seven children—have time for some fun. They travel, shoot sporting clays and are competitive ballroom dancers.
But Ferrara still maintains an active gynecology practice, is a doctor volunteer at the Gennesaret Free Clinic, and is part of the regular on-call rotation at Community Hospital North, where he makes a point of working on holidays so others on the staff can be at home with their children.
“His energy is never-ending,” said colleague Dr. David Kiley. “And it’s all for the sheer enjoyment of caring for patients and their families.”•
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