Barbara Crimond Mar 02, Comments 0. Frankum, a surgeon whose flights can be followed online , assumed the role of pilot-doctor around Over the last plus years, he has flown and worked in Eastern Colorado towns including Burlington, Springfield and Yuma, as well as a few spots in Kansas, providing care ranging from general surgery to colorectal screenings. While there is little information about how many doctors and nurses fly or are flown between hospitals, those who do may see significant hourly rates.
Locum tenens , health care providers who fill gaps in understaffed hospitals and clinics, may spend anywhere from days to years in one location, while doctors like Frankum may travel between a handful of locations each week.
Access to medical services can be limited for people living in remote towns such as Springfield, especially for patients who need specialized care. It sits about 30 miles from the border of Kansas to the east and Oklahoma to the south, and included among the few buildings surrounding Main Street are a couple of restaurants, one post office and a small movie theater, as well as the hospital.
Springfield is also the county seat of Baca County, one of the poorest counties in the state. These hospitals stabilize patients in critical condition before transporting them to treatment centers in cities with the appropriate facilities, like Denver or Colorado Springs. In Colorado, the Center for Healthcare Quality found that seven hospitals in the state had losses exceeding assets. Frankum comes from a farming family. Both succeeded, affording the family the chance to move to Memphis, where Frankum was born.
Frankum studied medicine at the University of Tennessee and completed his residency in general surgery at the Atlanta Medical Center in Georgia. He moved to Denver in , and after a couple of years working as a surgeon specializing in colon and rectal surgery on the Front Range, and took over making the long-distance visit to Springfield from his partner, who had tired of traveling the route. Because Frankum already owned his own plane, he decided to fly himself instead of driving the four-plus hours.
