Retired doctor goes from restoring patients' health to restoring 240-year-old farmhouse

A North Huntingdon family doctor who recently retired from a career of helping to restore the health of his patients is now working to restore a farmhouse that has been in his family for almost a century.

Dr. Daniel Medic hung up his stethoscope at the end of November at age 70, retiring from a career as a family physician after 37 years.

“I always wanted to be a family doctor,” said Medic, who was inspired to become a physician by his uncle Walter Medic, who was a doctor in the Coraopolis area.

“My family always stressed education,” Medic said.

After graduating from Norwin High School in 1971, he earned his bachelor’s degree in pre-medicine at Pennsylvania State University, then went to graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh. He earned his medical degree at the College of Osteopathic Medicine in Des Moines, Iowa, and did his residency at the former McKeesport Hospital. For three years in the late 1980s, he worked in Toledo, Iowa, the result of a government program to place doctors in rural areas in return for covering medical school costs.

Looking back on his career, Medic said he believes he was a family physician in the “golden age” of medicine. His career began at a time when he still made house calls and visited his patients in the hospital, before hospital systems had their own physicians tend to those patients.

Now, he said, there is a more corporate approach to medicine. He kept his practice independent for most of his 33 years serving the Norwin community, selling it 2½ years ago to what was then the Greensburg-based Excela Health system. Medic described the move as “stage 1 of retirement.”

“I believe primary care practices should be independent,” Medic said.

His physician assistant, Laura Delliquadri, who has worked with him for 27 years, said he was great with his patients.

“He was kind, loving, tolerant and had patience,” Delliquadri said.

He’s compassionate to a fault, she said.

“He’s the kind of person who would give a kidney to a stranger who faced dialysis and then give his other kidney to a person and then wonder why he needed dialysis,” Delliquadri said.

Medic’s approach to family medicine was not to rush through a patient’s visit. He was the kind of doctor who could spend an hour with a patient, hear a complaint from his next patient about how much time they waited, then spend an hour with that patient, Delliquadri said.

The running joke in the office was that the doctor worked on “Medic time,” meaning he was often late because of how much attention he gave to his patients.

Medic said his approach to treating patients was to take the amount of time that was necessary.

“If I need the time, I take the time.”

Despite the changes in the health care industry, “this is still a good field to get into,” Medic said.

“It’s a great profession … a noble profession.”

Medic is retiring when the Association of American Medical Colleges is projecting a shortage of primary care physicians of between 17,800 and 48,000 by the year 2034. The American Medical Association said this fall that almost half of the practicing physicians in the nation are older than 55.

“We need more doctors. There is a shortage of family primary care specialists,” he said.

Retirement plans

One of Medic’s missions in retirement is to work on the farmhouse his immigrant grandparents acquired in 1924 in the Shafton section of North Huntingdon, where they raised 10 children and four nieces and nephews, Medic said.

The farmhouse, sitting on a 118-acre parcel, dates to the late 1780s, Medic said.

As a youngster, Medic recalled, his family raised chickens and sold eggs in McKeesport, East McKeesport and White Oak, as well as selling fresh corn. The farm was a supplier of turkeys for Thanksgiving, raising about 300 turkeys, and raised pigs as well.

“There was never a downtime,” Medic said.

He said he enjoys making stained glass windows and lamps and will have more time to devote to that since retirement. The work, he said, is “therapeutic.” Some of the pieces might find a home in the farmhouse.

He and his wife, Julie, plan to travel out West, seeing states such as Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. They also will have more time to spend with their three daughters.

Medic had been involved in volunteering on a medical mission to Jamaica, where he provided medical care at a clinic to people who are impoverished. He said he might consider doing something similar in retirement.

In his very early stage of retirement, Medic still is adjusting to not having to be in the office each morning.

“I’m trying to get into a routine. I’m still working on that.”