Health director flying the coop | News | sent-trib.com – Sentinel-Tribune

A Falcon who came home to rule the roost at the new health center is leaving the flock.

Dr. Jeffery Swartz has been the medical director and family medicine physician, integrative medicine, for the Bowling Green State University Falcon Health Center on South College Drive for three years.

He was recruited to come back to the area in 2016 to lead Falcon Health Center, which also has Wood County Hospital as a partner.

Falcon Health Center offers immunizations, travel medicine, skin screenings, lab and radiology services, whole health care, acupuncture, chiropractic care and physical therapy to all of the community, not just BGSU students, faculty and staff.

There have been many changes in the medical field since Swartz started practicing. As time went on, he said he found himself getting back to the basics.

The good is we have great technology and we have great drugs that extend lives, provide comfort and we do things quicker, he said. Theres so much focus on the technology and the whiz-bang stuff that weve discounted the importance of relationships, and its gotten in the way of us focusing on the patient.

To remind Swartz and his staff of Falcon Health Centers main mission, there is a patient, large and in the middle of a board with all of their services. The board fills up a wall in a conference room.

Whole health or integrated medicine using only evidence-based treatments, is the focus of the center.

Ive always said if you give the patient the right information, theyll make the right decision, Swartz said. Were so focused on all the parts, were not looking at the whole.

Treating cancer patients has helped him see different treatments and the whole patient.

Sometimes cancer patients, if you can get them well motivated and relaxed and doing meditation, they take their treatment better, he said. Its all about comfort for the patient.

At Falcon Health, he brought in an acupuncturist and chiropractor.

Its the only place I know about in Northwest Ohio where they work alongside a physical therapist, he said. They help each other on cases.

We do medication reviews. We also think about healthy supplements that not only help to heal the body but also help to heal the mind. Fish oil and magnesium help many folks with anxiety, with sleep and with PTSD.

Swartz graduated from the Medical College Ohio in Toledo 40 years ago this month.

He was the youngest of five boys. In Swartzs late teen years, when his second oldest brother received a kidney transplant, he became interested in physics and dialysis.

That really turned me on to medicine, he said.

Swartz grew up in Perrysburg Township and graduated from Rossford High School.

I was really well prepared for college because I had great teachers and great honors classes there, he said. It prepared me for Bowling Green.

At BGSU, he was a chemistry major, with minors in physics and philosophy/medical ethics. At MCO, he found he liked all his rotations so Swartz decided to become a family doctor.

He practiced in northern Wood County with Dr. Fritz Price for a number of years. Swartz picked up another interest, after being the team physician for Lake High School, and started the sports medicine network at St. Charles Hospital in Oregon.

Medical education has also been one of his interests. In 1996, he helped bring the Mercy family medicine residency to St. Charles and became director of medical education.

Ive always been involved with teaching medical students and residents, Swartz said.

In 2010, he moved to South Carolina to do full-time academics. He was a founding faculty member of the University of South Carolina at Greenville School of Medicine.

His two sons graduated from there and are in residence training. Ben is finishing family medicine training at Ohio State University and Andrew is an oncologist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Daughter Bridget is a BGSU graduate who works for Ohioans Home Health Care, a local company.

Swartzs wife, Terri, has also worked in the medical field, as a physician liaison for Wood County Hospital.

While hes leaving Falcon Health Center on June 30, he is not ready to retire. Swartz plans to join an integrative medicine practice.

Weve started something good here, he said of Falcon Health Center and its future.

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Health director flying the coop | News | sent-trib.com - Sentinel-Tribune