New surgeon at Oswego Hospital, who specializes in breast surgery, says hospital wants to expand its minimally invasive surgery program and add a robotic platform as the next step
By Chris Motola
Q: How long have you been a general surgeon with Oswego Health?
A: I started in May [2023].
Q: You’re coming from Albany?
A: Yes, I had been in and around the Albany area since I got out of training around 2013. So I was working there for about 10 years.
Q: What attracted you to a smaller hospital in a small city?
A: I’ve always liked smaller community hospitals. My first job out of residency was a smaller community hospital, so that was my first draw. Meeting the administration and their vision for where they want the hospital to go, particularly with its general surgery service, was key for me. The icing on the cake is the lake. I had my boat on the lake all summer. I’ve been fishing in the Salmon River this winter. So those are added benefits of coming up here. But really, it started with the size of the hospital and the commitment to grow and expand the general surgery service, which is great for me.
Q: What’s the patient volume been like?
A: It’s been very steady. It’s been a good practice. We were basically up and running the minute I got here. There are a lot of patients, a lot of demand, probably more patients than we can take care of. We were building the practice all summer long and into the fall. We just keep getting busier and busier. We add more office hours and OR time. The plan is continued expansion for me and adding more general surgeons over the next year.
Q: What conditions do you generally treat at Oswego Health?
A: The practice is truly a bread-and-butter general surgery practice. A lot of hernias of all varieties. A lot of gall bladders, appendectomies when we’re on call. Some colon surgery. Some breast surgery. We do lots of lumps and bumps in the office. Those are the most common things. The direction of the general surgery office overall is to increase our numbers, to expand our services. That includes more breast care. In particular doing our own breast biopsies. In the future, more endocrine surgery, in particular thyroid surgery. A bit more of what we call foregut surgery, which includes hiatal hernias and more reflux-type surgeries. And next year we’re hoping to expand our minimally invasive surgery and add a robotic platform as the next big step.
Q: Does the weather in Oswego County affect what the general surgery department has to be prepared to deal with, in the event that a more complex case can’t be easily evacuated to a bigger city?
A: Absolutely. The community is used to it. I’m born and raised in Upstate New York, so I’m kind of used to it. But on really bad snow days there might be patients who miss their scheduled elective surgeries or miss office appointments. It’s a factor, but I think by and large people are used to it. From the perspective of the hospital, of course, the more services we’re able to offer locally, the happier everyone is. The community really likes Oswego Hospital. It’s their hospital; they want to do as much as they can within the hospital and the system if possible. Part of that may be the weather conditions, and part of that is they like their town and their hospital. And that’s great for practicing physicians here.
Q: You’re a general surgeon of course, but are there any procedures you do that you would classify as a specialty in the informal sense?
A: For me the big one, and I think it’s a big part of why I was brought in, is the breast surgery side of things. We’re trying to make some arrangements, purchase some new equipment and build some new facilities so that we can offer breast biopsies here in town that in the past were all performed in Syracuse. So that’s a skill set that I have that we’re looking to take advantage of. The second one is that I had been on the robotic surgery platform for six years before coming here. It’s an amazing device, particularly for hernia repair. So I’m looking forward to seeing that come to Oswego Health, ideally next year, sometime in the summer.
Q: I notice you have some background in wound care too.
A: Correct, I did that for a little less than a year between general surgery jobs. We have a wound care center in the hospital that does a terrific job. There’s a little bit of overlap. We help out and do some of that on the inpatient side, but long-term they get plugged into the wound care center. As a surgeon, I think it was a great skill set to learn and utilize, since we do end up having to do some of that on the inpatient side.
Q: This is less stitching up someone who comes into the emergency room and more long-term wound care, I assume?
A: Yes, these are more chronic wounds, like foot wounds and ulcers, vascular wounds. In the nursing home population, unfortunately, this may include bed sores. And of course we are surgeons who create wounds, so sometimes we help out making sure those heal well.
Lifelines
Name: Ryan M. Walker, M.D.
Position: General surgeon at Oswego Health
Hometown: Wappingers Falls
Education: Ithaca College (bachelor’s degree); American University of the Caribbean (medical degree); York Hospital in Pennsylvania (post-graduate and residency training)
Interests: Breast surgery, colorectal surgery, gallbladder surgery, and hernia repairs, with an emphasis on utilizing minimally invasive techniques. He is also a DaVinci-certified robotic surgeon.
Affiliations: Oswego Health
Recent positions: Practice for over 10 years at both St. Peter’s Heath Partners and St. Mary’s Healthcare in the Albany area
Organizations: American College of Physicians
Family: Wife, two cats
Hobbies: Fishing, boating, skiing