Patricia Hoffmann loves helping people. It’s one of the reasons she got into the practice of medicine, along with her fascination with science. Now, as president-elect of the Iowa Medical Society, Hoffmann will work to help not only her patients, but every doctor in the state.

What does your new position entail?

I will be president of the organization starting next year. Basically, we’re the spokespeople for the 4,000 physicians in the state of Iowa. We do a variety of things, from political advocacy, talking with hospitals, working with government agencies on Medicare and Medicaid and working with private insurers. It’s a real eclectic group of people who come together to try to make a difference for the physicians and patients in Iowa.

Are you from Iowa?

I did my residency at the University of Chicago. I grew up here in Iowa, I did my medical school here at (Des Moines University) and in 1989 I did an internship in Columbus, Ohio. Then I relocated to Chicago to do my residency from 1990 to 1993. After that, I moved to Mason City. I moved here in 2002.

How did you get into this field?

I found myself at a pretty young age being fascinated by anatomy. I grew up on a farm, and so you see a lot of animals. But I was really fascinated by the human body. In high school I started taking biology courses and decided maybe I did want to go into medicine because I found it so fascinating. Once I got into medical school, what I really enjoyed was physiology and pharmacology, and that’s pretty much what anesthesia is.

What brought you to Des Moines?

It was just a little closer to my family. It’s also always nice to have more partners. I wanted to live closer to my parents to make sure my children got to be close to them growing up because my grandparents were a great part of my life.

What are some of the issues your organization is looking at?

Certainly, the (increase in the) cigarette tax is a good thing. The message it sends that smoking certainly is bad for your health, to say the least, and there is a price to be paid for that. I think another thing that is imperative to Iowa is Medicare reimbursement. We have one of the lowest reimbursement rates of Medicare in the country, so we see physicians that are under pressure to take care of very sick people and get reimbursed quite a bit lower than their colleagues in other states. That makes recruiting and retention of physicians quite a bit more difficult, especially in more rural areas of the state.

So, it’s hard to get doctors to stay in Iowa?

Clearly brain drain is a problem, and I feel that the more kids we educate that are from Iowa at our state schools and private universities, the more likely they will stay in Iowa. They call Iowa home, and many people like to come home to practice. It’s more difficult to recruit and retain here because we don’t have mountains and we don’t have oceans. But we certainly have some great things going for us, like a relative lack of poverty, traffic and crime. But you do have to have a reason to be in Iowa. I think most people live here and practice here because they were raised here.

You’re an example of how that works.

Yeah, I came back because this is where I wanted to raise my kids. I was tired of the crime and traffic in Chicago. You forget how much stress that adds to your life once you get away from it. I’ll never forget the first night I was on call in Mason City. I called the security guard to walk me to my car and he thought I had lost my mind. That was routine in inner-city Chicago. Not that we’re completely sheltered here in Des Moines, but certainly it doesn’t impact our daily lives as much as when we lived in Chicago.

Any future doctors in the family?

My daughter wants to be an attorney. My son’s latest aspirations were to be a marine biologist. He always has very interesting career choices.

What was your first job?

The first job was walking beans on our family farm. We had I don’t know how many acres of soybeans and we walked them every summer.

What about the best job?

The best job I ever had was being a lifeguard at the community pool. It was sitting in the sunshine to do a job that wasn’t very hard work. It was like baby sitting 200 kids a day, but it was a lot of fun.