For Immediate Release
May 14, 2004
Contact: Brent Annear
phone: (512) 370-1381
pager: (512) 656-7320
Brent Annear
Bohn D. Allen, MD, FACS, was installed as president of Texas Medical Association on Thursday, May 13, 2004, during ceremonies at TexMed 2004, the statewide physician organization's annual conference. Dr. Allen is a general surgeon who has been in private practice in Arlington, Texas, since 1971.
The son of a World War II fighter pilot who ran a dry cleaning operation in Alpine, Dr. Allen has wanted to be surgeon since he was a child. He was lucky enough to be taken under the wing of an Alpine doctor who ran a hospital and clinic next to his father's business. He was, in effect, the physician's apprentice, working in his lab, assisting him in surgery, and pulling night nurse duty while in high school and during the summers while he was in college. That experience, plus the lessons in human anatomy he learned from the physician, gave him a head start on his medical career.
Since earning his medical degree from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in 1961, Dr. Allen has experienced the worst and the best that medicine has to offer. He spent 12 years as an Army surgeon and saw the horrors of war while treating soldiers wounded in Vietnam. Today, Dr. Allen is a tall man with gray hair and a twinkle in his blue eyes-the perfect picture of a kindly, calm, caring physician.
"The goal of my presidency is to re-energize and strengthen the pride, the professionalism, and the hope of physicians," Dr. Allen said. "They've been beaten down so badly over the past 15 years."
"I'm realistic enough to know that in a year I'm not going to change the reimbursement system, but I want to open the dialogue to point out the restraints that physicians have to operate under, and at the same time provide charity care, provide care to the uninsured and underinsured, and Medicaid and Medicare patients, all of which don't even pay the cost of doing the business," he said. "Yet they step up every day and do it because they're physicians. Physicians are honorable people. They do what's best for their patients in spite of the hardships they have to endure. I want the public to understand what physicians are doing for the citizens of Texas and the people of this country."
The long-time TMA member worked his way up through the ranks of the largest medical society in the nation, which has more than 39,500 physician and student members. He served as a member of the TMA Board of Trustees and as chair of the TMA Council on Socioeconomics. He has been active in organized medicine for many years, serving in the Texas Delegation to the American Medical Association House of Delegates.
Dr. Allen is past president of Arlington Medical Society, Tarrant County Medical Society, and Fort Worth Surgical Society. He serves on the Board of Trustees of both the Arlington Memorial Hospital and the Texas Health Resources hospital system. He is a recipient of the Arlington Medical Society's Physician of the Year award and the Tarrant County Medical Society's Gold-Headed Cane award.
The Alpine native earned his undergraduate degree in just three years from The University of Texas at Austin. After medical school, he served an internship at Fitzsimmons General Hospital in Denver, Colo.; a residency in general and vascular surgery at Madigan General Hospital in Tacoma, Wash.; and a fellowship in burns at the Institute of Surgical Research burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. He ran a burn unit at the 106th General Hospital in Yokohama, Japan, and was a consultant for the treatment and evacuation of burned patients for the Far East Command during the Vietnam War.
TMA President's Page
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