Local doctor has dual role in pandemic
Dr. Rick Fogle
Dr. Rick Fogle
Courtesy of Pennsylvania Army National Guard
Dr. Rick Fogle, center, supervises a COVID-19 test. Members of the Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard administered tests in nursing homes.
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard
Dr. Rick Fogle, left, supervises a COVID-19 test.
Dr. Rick Fogle, right, supervises a COVID-19 test
Dr. Rick Fogle, right, supervises a COVID-19 test
Dr. Rick Fogle, right, supervises a COVID-19 test
Courtesy of Pennsylvania Army National Guard
Dr. Rick Fogle, center, supervises a COVID-19 test.
Dr. Rick Fogle, right, supervises a COVID-19 test
Cornerstone Care CEO Richard Rinehart
Dr. Rick Fogle, at right
By Kristin Emery
Most of us might imagine that we would be thinking of slowing down our workload when we turn 67 or even contemplate retiring. Most of us aren’t Dr. Rick Fogle, who, at age 67, is still working full-time as a physician and teacher but is working two jobs and taking on the COVID-19 pandemic head-on in both roles. When he’s not seeing patients at Cornerstone Care Community Health Centers in Washington or Clairton, he’s answering the call of duty as a member of the Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. What’s equally impressive is that Fogle didn’t even finish medical school until the age of 58.
“I’ve been practicing medicine since 2012 after I got out of my fellowship,” says Fogle, double board-certified in family medicine and fellowship-trained and board-certified as a geriatrician. “We have 10 to 11 different sites. I work out of Washington and Clairton in family medicine and geriatrics seeing patients every day.”
Called to medicine
Fogle says the calling to specialize in geriatrics came naturally.
“I come from a long, long line of long-livers,” says Fogle. “My father just passed away three years ago at the age of 95. My grandfater made it to make it to 98, so I plan on practicing for a long time since I started late in life.”
Fogle worked as a paramedic in West Virginia and later as a physician assistant. “When I was a paramedic, I did a lot of transports for geriatric patients to and from hospitals and I just developed a soft spot for my little blue hairs… I just love to be with them,” laughs Fogle. “I moved back to Pittsburgh in 2014 to help take care of my ailing father in his last years. Geriatrics has always been a soft spot for me and I’ve always wanted to do that.” Fogle graduated from the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine and is now helping to teach the next generation of doctors through a residency program. Cornerstone CEO Richard Rinehart says Fogle has been instrumental in helping to expand the group’s care. “We’re nonprofit, we’ve been around for 42 years now,” Rinehart says. “We see a total of around 21,000 patients a year. We continue to expand because our mission is to provide access to primary health care for everybody who needs it, but we particularly are interested in places that have barriers to accessing care and populations that are underserved.”
Rinehart says the COVID-19 pandemic drove everyone to crisis mode. “This whole crisis has thrown us all into kind of a new reality,” he adds. “One of the results was that Dr. Fogle was called to duty and we were happy to cooperate. That is just right in line with our mission – he’s out there helping across the state.”
Called to serve
That call to duty came when Fogle was called to active duty with the Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. He serves as the brigade medical advisor to the commander and holds the rank of lieutenant colonel.
“I didn’t join the military until I was 45,” Fogle says. “I have always wanted to be in the military. However, because I was in high school in the Vietnam era, my father was a World War II vet and did not want me to join, but I always found a call to it. My family’s always been military oriented.” One of Fogle’s sons is former military, and the other is in his same brigade based out of the Washington County Airport.
The recent deployment took him to Harrisburg doing site surveys for the guard to place soldiers into nursing homes struck by coronavirus outbreaks. He later did site surveys to help staff in hard-hit Beaver County, Westmoreland County and the Bradford area. “We’re now into the mode where we’re no longer staffing but we’re sending out strike teams where we go in and test every resident and every staff member,” he says. “We consider ourselves what we call civilian soldiers, and it was really fortuitous that being a geriatrician, the army was able to make use of me. Being a citizen soldier is right in line with the mission of Cornerstone Care where we serve the underserved. As a Pennsylvania National Guardsman, we serve all people in Pennsylvania, whoever needs our help.”
Fogle admits this is an outside the box use of the National Guard as his previous duties involved responding to natural disasters or deployments to Afghanistan. He and another geriatrician from Philidelphia were able to utilize their unique skill sets, “to go into the nursing homes that needed help and be able to really be in tune with what they need and what was going on with their population and their staffing.” They found staff who were overwhelmed. “Some were crying over the phone because they’d been working double, triple shifts. Some were elderly themselves, close to retirement age and quitting because they were afraid of getting COVID,” recalls Fogle. “There were people who had become sick, had family problems because now their kids hadn’t been going to school and they were stretched to the max. They were just absolutely at the breaking point.”
The ongoing crisis
Fogle is now splitting time between Cornerstone and the Army and says he sees so many people who have delayed medical care because of the pandemic. “I’m really worried about what could happen if school starts back because a lot of the parents have not brought kids in for checkups, immunizations,” he says. “Patients are all concerned about COVID. Cornerstone Care has been actually running open testing sites at Burgettstown for the last month.” The medical offices have implemented safety protocols to help patients feel comfortable coming back to see their doctors, and they’ve also begun performing some appointments remotely. He says he hopes to encourage patients not to put off essential appointments that can help them stay healthy.