Download PDF - Ward Rounds - Northwestern University

At that time, the general manager of
the Bulls was Dick Klein, who had been a
Northwestern undergraduate classmate
of Harold Method, MD, a general surgeon
at Northwestern. Klein asked Dr. Method
if he would assume the role of team
physician, which he did for a few months.
“However, Dr. Method, who I knew
from Passavant, had limited interest in
attending Bulls’ games, which was one
of the requirements,” says Bachman.
Hence, Dr. Method approached Dr.
Bachman about taking the position,
which he enthusiastically accepted.
Dr. Bachman’s duties included
conducting preseason physicals for the
12 players on the roster and treating
significant injuries (either conservatively
or surgically). As an orthopaedic surgeon,
he performed fewer than a dozen
surgeries, primarily knee, during his 13
years as team physician.
Players included Artis Gilmore,
Chester “Chet” Walker, and Jerry Sloan
(later head coach for the Utah Jazz). And
for most of those years, the Bulls made
the playoffs, but not a single league
championship.
“Many of the players and coaching staff
back then were real gentlemen — educated
and deeply involved in the community,”
observes Dr. Bachman.
A life of sports
Around 1976, Dr. Bachman cofounded
and served as director of the Center for
Sports Medicine at Northwestern.
“At the time, my colleagues and I were
seeing high school, college, and professional
athletes,” he says. “We learned
that one of the problems faced by high
school athletes was a lack of adequate
medical care. There were no athletic
trainers. The coaches were responsible
for determining whether a player was
seriously injured and for rehabilitation
after an injury. But this really wasn’t
appropriate, so we instituted a successful
program to train high school teachers
to become athletic trainers.”
From approximately 1972 to 1986, Dr.
Bachman also wrote a weekly Chicago
Tribune syndicated sports medicine
column for a lay audience. Popular topics
were running, cycling, and tennis.
Not only did he share his literary talent
in the newspaper, he has also co-written
four books including, “The Use of Forensic
Anthropology,” with Robert Pickering,
Ph.D, another Northwestern alum.
In the late 1970s, Dr. Bachman chaired
a committee for the governor’s commission
on sports medicine in Illinois, which
had the same goal as the Center for
Sports Medicine: attempting to improve
medical care for high school athletes.
Lured by mountains
Dr. Bachman left his position with the Bulls
in 1980 to move to southwestern Colorado,
after several years of vacationing in the
mountains with his wife. There, Dr.
Bachman developed a small horse ranch.
“I was also able to go down the valley
to play golf on Wednesdays and up the
mountain to ski at Telluride on Sundays,”
he says. In addition, he was elected
county coroner for 13 years. He also
acted as medical director for the Ouray
Mountain Rescue Team for nearly all his
years in Colorado.
Upon retiring from private practice as
an orthopaedic surgeon in 1993, Dr.
Bachman and his wife relocated to
Denver, where both their children and
grandchildren had resettled.
Two years later, Dr. Bachman started
medical consulting for the Western Areas
of the U.S. Postal Service, which in 1997
Drs. John Hefferon, MD ‘73; Proctor Anderson, MD ‘72, GME ‘77;
and Bates Noble, MD, GME ‘70, were all partners of alumnus David
Bachman (2nd from left) AT MEDICAL ASSOCIATES OF CHICAGO. Noble
and Hefferon later succeeded Bachman as team physicians of the
Bulls. “Proctor covered for all of us when we were traveling and
also was responsible for maintaining our sanity,” says Dr. Bachman.
turned into senior area medical director
position for the Western Area. Later, the
Pacific Area was added, which expanded
in 2006 to national medical administrator
for the Postal Service. In that role, he
supervised a team of approximately 50
physicians and 150 nurses across the
country that implemented a medical case
management program that significantly
slowed the escalating costs of workers’
compensation and returned employees
back to work more quickly.
Reflecting on his years in sports
medicine, Dr. Bachman believes that
today’s athletes are much savvier about
preventing injury. Furthermore, less
invasive arthroscopy now generally
allows people to recover faster and
return to daily activities.
ward rounds Fall/Winter 2012 — p.25