L&M chief of surgery leaving

New London - Less than a year and a half after relocating to southeastern Connecticut to become Lawrence & Memorial Hospital's chief of surgery, Dr. Garth Ballantyne is leaving to head the surgery department of a veterans medical center.

Ballantyne, 60, said Wednesday he will leave L&M March 16 to become chief of surgery and professor of surgery at the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta, Ga., and also will be affiliated with the nearby Georgia Health Sciences University Medical Center.

"All of my career, I was at a teaching hospital, teaching residents and medical students and writing papers," said Ballantyne, who came to L&M from Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey. "L&M was my first community hospital. I missed doing those other things."

Before Hackensack University Medical Center, Ballantyne was on the faculty at Yale Medical School and was physician-administrator at the VA Hospital in West Haven. At L&M, Ballantyne said, he was doing more "bread-and-butter" types of surgeries rather than the more unusual types he prefers, surgeries that typically are reserved for academic and teaching hospitals. Community hospitals, he said, should focus on excelling at surgery for "the epidemics of that age," which currently include obesity, breast cancer, colorectal cancer and joint surgery.

"L&M does a great job with those," Ballantyne said.

Adjusting to the culture of a community hospital can be difficult for a physician from an academic teaching hospital, said Mike O'Farrell, L&M spokesman.

"It was challenging and frustrating at times," he said. "But he's found a great opportunity, and we're glad for him."

Ballantyne led L&M's addition of bariatric surgery, offering three different types of the weight-loss procedure. About 40 such procedures have been performed at L&M thus far, O'Farrell said.

L&M will continue offering bariatric surgery with Dr. Eric Sommer, one of three surgeons Ballantyne helped recruit.

L&M now has six full-time surgeons on staff, O'Farrell said.

"Nothing will change clinically right now," he said.

Bruce Cummings, L&M president and chief executive officer, will meet today with the surgeons to hear their input on an interim successor and a plan for a permanent replacement, O'Farrell said.

Dr. Donald Felitto of Southeastern Connecticut Nephrology Associates, president of the L&M medical staff, said the departure has been anticipated for several weeks. Ballantyne "made it very public" that he was looking for another position.

"There have been some tensions with Dr. Ballantyne among some of the medical staff," he said. "I consider him to be a very gifted surgeon, and it's unfortunate he's leaving. That's how I feel."

j.benson@theday.com