Labette Health Welcomes

Three New Physicians

PARSONS, Kan., July 29, 2010 --Labette Health welcomes Dr. Terrence Coffey, an anesthesiologist; Dr. Julie Griffin, an internal medicine-pediatrics hospitalist; and Dr. Eric Thomson, a family practitioner who recently completed a fellowship in obstetrics. Dr. Coffey began working in surgery three weeks ago. The other two begin seeing patients Monday, August 2, Dr. Griffin in the hospital and Dr. Thomson in Labette Health’s new Family Practice Clinic on the first floor of Building E, the new medical office building.

Dr. Coffey, a native of Calumet, Okla., graduated summa cum laude from Oklahoma State University with a bachelors’ degree in physiology. After receiving his medical degree at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine in Oklahoma City, he completed a University of Oklahoma-Tulsa internship at St. John Hospital. He recently finished a three-year anesthesiology residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Conn.

As a research assistant in Oklahoma State University’s Zoology Department, he studied the effects of petroleum contamination on the immune systems of mammals. He later worked for an Oklahoma City research firm that specialized in protein genomics for the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr. Griffin, who was born in Rocky Mount, N.C., recently completed a four-year combined residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington. She received her medical degree from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Kansas City and Wichita after graduating from Kansas State University in Manhattan with a bachelors’ degree.

During her residency, she also worked as a house physician and an emergency physician at other hospitals in Kentucky. While at KU, she worked at the Children’s Primary Care Clinic providing healthcare for underprivileged children.

As a hospitalist, Dr. Griffin will see only patients who have been admitted to Labette Health.  According to the American Society of Hospital Medicine, hospitalists are among the fastest-growing medical specialties, and Labette Health was the first in this area to implement a hospitalist program. Several studies have shown that when hospitalists are involved in patient care, average hospital stays are reduced and costs are lower, with no significant difference in either patient satisfaction or mortality rates.

Dr. Thomson received his undergraduate degree from Drury College in Springfield, Mo., and a masters’ degree from Pittsburg State University, both in biology. After attending the University of Kansas Medical School in Kansas City, he completed a family-medicine residency at Broadlawns Medical Center in Des Moines, Iowa, and an obstetrics fellowship in Grand Forks, N.D.

At Pittsburg State, he worked as a research and teaching assistant and volunteered at the Pittsburg Free Clinic. He also worked several years as a laboratory technician at Boone Hospital Center in Columbia, Mo.

Dr. Thomson joins Dr. Jed Hetlinger, Dr. Denise Huskey and Dr. Andrea Willhite, as well as Jill Pool, PA-C, and Cindy Larson, A.R.N.P., in Labette Health’s Family Practice Clinic. The clinic, which opened last December, brought together healthcare providers from the Katy Clinic and other physicians’ offices in one location on the Labette Health campus.

He and his wife Wendy have two sons, Ben and Joseph.

Dr. Terrence Coffey

Dr. Julie Griffin

Dr. Eric Thomson