Physician of the Year

The Physician of the Year Award is the highest honor given to a member of the AzAFP. The winner is truly the best of the best. The criteria for this award are (1) to be a compassionate, caring family physician, (2) have engaged in community involvement that enhances the quality of life in his/her home area, and (2) provides a credible role model as a healer and human being to his/her community, and as a professional in the science and art of medicine to colleagues, other health professionals, and especially to young physicians in training and medical students. This name of the winner of the Arizona Physician of the Year Award is submitted to the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) for consideration as the National Physician of the Year Award. Arizona has had three members receive this prestigious, national award: Eric Ossowski, MD, Adele O'Sullivan, MD, and William Ellert, MD.

Dr William Ellert has been a compassionate and caring provider since his high school days as an orderly in a nursing home, continuing through his career as a nurse and nurse practitioner, and extending to his service as a family physician. Throughout his entire career, his emphasis has been on serving those most in need. Until recently, he was the chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine for the Maricopa Integrated Health System (MIHS), but he also serves the outreach sites of the Maricopa County Health Care for the Homeless Program, literally treating patients by the side of the road. And, he considers this a “privilege.”

While with MIHS, he established a one-of-a-kind Advanced Hospital Training Fellowship because he feared that younger family physicians are losing the opportunity to become comfortable with advanced skills such as high-risk obstetrics, ICU care, and diagnostic procedures such as colonoscopy, EGD, and stress testing.

Dr Ellert is the project director and chairman of the Board for a new nonprofit organization called “Circle the City,” whose focus is to assist with the unmet needs of the homeless in Maricopa County, particularly during times of illness. He is working to open a Recuperative Care Center for the sick homeless in Phoenix to close the gap between the hospital and the street and establish a place where hospitals can safely and appropriately discharge their homeless patients.

If you were to read all the support letters that accompanied his nomination, you would learn about the numerous situations in which he has volunteered during his off hours whenever he has been asked, whether it was performing a circumcision for an infant who needed one for religious reasons but could not go to the hospital, or taking the red eye across the country to help someone make the hard decisions regarding a terminally ill patient, or visiting friends of colleagues in the hospital, not because they were his patients but because his colleagues just wanted his moral support. His coworkers and colleagues report over and over that Dr Ellert will never say no when asked for assistance with anything; there is never a pause to think about it, just a “yes to whatever you need.” Indeed, “WWBD” is prominently displayed on bulletin boards throughout MIHS and is a phrase regularly used by his colleagues. It stands for “What Would Bill Do?” It is an expression of the deep admiration with which Dr Ellert is regarded. When coworkers are trying to work through a medical dilemma or administrative problem, they always start with “WWBD.”

Because of his superb teaching abilities, Dr Ellert was the 2003 Arizona nominee for the
Dr Ellert and his mother enjoy the Awards Luncheon in Scottsdale, Arizona. Thomas W Johnson Award for Career Contributions to Family Medicine Education. In addition, Dr Ellert is active in the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM), serving as co-chair of the Group on Hospital Medicine and Procedural Training. But he also realizes the importance of fun and has taught a widely popular lecture for the last seven years on Medical Themes in Film. Dr Ellert is viewed as an exemplary role model by all who work with him, although Dr Ellert would say it’s just that he surrounds himself with physicians who can complement his weaknesses. His colleagues add that Dr Ellert always makes others feel that they are his equal and that he consistently respects and values their contributions. As someone who worked with Dr Ellert for seven years stated: “He is one of the few people in leadership that I implicitly trust, both for judgment and integrity, and with whom I routinely confide and use as a reality checker.” Another colleague summed up Dr Ellert with this statement: “He is the epitome of the Code of Ethics I follow professionally each day.”