![]() ![]() ![]() It was a match that seemed likely to last and to the Katonah group as well as within the larger medical community, continuity is no small thing these days. In the end, the Katonah group enthusiastically invited Thomas J. ''I think,'' Lester says of the polite, 11th-hour inspection that ensued, ''they wanted to be sure I would be happy here.'' Though not given to communal barbecues or other rituals of togetherness, the group, whose members lead extremely comfortable but far-from-ostentatious suburban existences, suggested that Lester bring his fiancee out to Katonah for dinner, to meet them and their rarely assembled wives. He was, furthermore, engaged to a woman who, he made clear to the group, had no intention of giving up her Memorial Sloan-Kettering job as an instructor of nurses in the administration of chemotherapy. At the time of the interview, Lester was 31, single, and living in a studio apartment in hospital housing in Manhattan. Grayer, the group's general surgeon, who wanted to make sure Lester would be aggressive enough in treating a young woman with breast cancer. Meeting with the group for the second time, with 12 of the 13 members present, Lester found himself professionally pincered between Herbert Kaufmann, the group's erudite and laconic gastroenterologist, who wanted to know how aggressive the young man would be in the treatment of a terminal pancreatic cancer in an elderly woman and Stephen J. ''As soon as I saw the town,'' Lester recalls, ''I thought, this is what I want.''īut it was his reading of the group itself, and particularly of its members' tolerance for individual differences in style of practice, that convinced Lester he had found the right place. It was a persuasive introduction to the community for Lester, and like the ''good schools'' phrase in the ad (which Lester, in his childless innocence, took to mean that the group's members had all attended same) was intended to signal that in Katonah, a doctor would find life especially pleasant. They went past the Baker's Cafe, the thrift shop and a local institution called Charles, where a person, in one stop, can still pick up a decent pair of slacks and an extension for a garden hose. Hanway, the group's 58-year-old president, and the two men drove the mile or so back to the office through the quiet town of two- and three-story storefronts. In January 1986, Lester took the 40-mile train ride from New York City to Katonah to meet with the group's seven internists. A YEAR AND A HALF ago, nearing the end of a two-year fellowship at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Tom Lester had never heard of Katonah, N.Y., or the Katonah Medical Group.Īnd except for having decided that he wanted no more of institutional medicine, he had given little thought to where he might practice - until he picked up The New England Journal of Medicine and saw the group's ad for someone interested in combining general internal medicine with his matched subspecialties of hematology and oncology. ![]()
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