Dr. Charles “Dale” Collins Named MIHS “Physician of the Year”

89-year-old Phoenix Physician Redefines “Active Aging”
Dr. Charles “Dale” Collins Named MIHS “Physician of the Year”
Media Contact: Michael Murphy – Cell: 602-568-0010

Maricopa Integrated Health System’s 2009 “Physician of the Year” gives new meaning to the term “active aging.”

Dr. Charles “Dale” Collins, 89, practices full time in obstetrics and gynecology at the South Central Family Health Center in South Phoenix. In his 60 plus year career in medicine, he has delivered more than 8,000 babies.

“My folks say better wear out than rust out,” he explains. “That was their favorite expression.”

To his patients and colleagues, Dr. Collins shows that you’re never too old to be a champion.
“At an age when many want to retire, he has set even higher goals for himself and his clinic and presses forward to the utmost of his ability,” said Robert Parker, executive assistant to the Chair of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women’s Health at MIHS.

Collins works in an area of Phoenix that has been particularly hard hit by the economic crisis, said Dr. Dean Coonrod, Ob-Gyn Department Chair. His “first concern is for the health of the patients and secondly for their economic welfare. He is always championing programs that will help relieve the financial burden for his largely Hispanic patients.”

Dr. Collins also is beloved by patients as a compassionate and kind caregiver. One 25-year-old mother said she met Dr. Collins when she was 15 and pregnant for the first time.

“He was the only doctor and person I felt comfortable around,” she said. “He was more like a friend than a doctor … I always tell people about him and how they should choose his office.”

Dr. Collins came to work at MIHS in 1990 after retiring with his wife to Arizona from private practice outside of Chicago. That “retirement” lasted about two years until he returned to the profession he loves.

“I still enjoy it. I still enjoy helping people,” he said. “OB is a happy practice by and large.”
Dr. Collins even has delivered babies from women who he delivered into the world 20 years earlier.
“You talk about satisfaction. That’s the epitome,” he says.

Dr. Collins opened his first family practice outside of Chicago in 1947 because “I was broke from going to school.” He completed his residency program at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital from 1950 to 1952 “back in its glory days.”

At the time, the hospital delivered 30 to 50 babies a day, and Dr. Collins did hundreds of surgeries. He was drafted during World War II, but because he had already been accepted into medical school, he joined a special training program that allowed him to continue his education in uniform. He was recalled during the Korean War and served two years at an Army hospital at Fort Benning. He also was a pilot for 30 years.

Dr. Collins’ key to keeping active and to living a life of purpose and possibility?

“I guess you have to enjoy what you’re doing, regardless of how you get paid,” he says. “You have to enjoy being a doctor first. If you didn’t, it would be a terrible life. It would be awful.

“I’m a doctor. That’s what I do.”

Last updated on December 16, 2009