Senior partner, Lawrenceville Urology
By: George Spohr
Residence: Hopewell.
Education: Brandeis University; Chicago Medical School.
First jobs: Assisted tree surgeons; clerk in the paint department of a store in Times Square.
Thumbnail sketch: Trained at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center, then pursued a job in the private-practice world. He was solicited by a man who was the founding partner of Lawrenceville Urology.
So you were hired in 1990 and stayed with the same firm? "In 1990, I took my first urology position, and I’m still in the same position as I was in 1990, until I became senior partner."
How many people work there? There are three practitioners and about 20 staff members. "Part of our business is that we also have a independent clinical-research unit as part of our urology practice, which evaluates new pharmaceutical drugs and instrumentation."
How does that work? "Pharmaceutical companies will come to us and say, ‘Hey, Gary, will you evaluate this new drug to treat prostate cancer,’ and I’ll go through the protocols and report back to the pharmaceutical company and the" U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
How did that come about? "It’s kind of funny, but this is the honest-to-God’s truth, when we went to move the office in 1996, I went to a furniture-supply store on Route 1 in Lawrence. I started talking to the owner of the store. And we were talking, and it turns out, after that conversation, she literally turns to me and said to me, ‘How would you like to do a drug trial with Viagra?’ We were doing a lot of work with erectile dysfunction at the time, and when Viagra came out and it was in trials at the time everybody and their brother would line up. You could get anyone to try out for Viagra. Turns out her husband was one of the higher-ups at Pfizer. We had dinner with him and kept nagging him I’m a very good nagger and eventually he sent me notification that I was accepted to do a trial with Viagra."
Is that a big part of your business? "It’s building. Right now, probably percentage, just to break it down, I would say probably 20 to 25 percent (of annual revenues) comes from clinical trials, 75 to 80 percent comes from regular urology. But that’s evolving as we speak, because we’re trying to build that business."
And right now, you’re in the middle of a move? "What we’re doing right now is moving down the block to the Medical Society Building. We’re starting to do more procedures in the office, to do that, you need room, you need the ability to have a recovery room, to have a procedure room and take on additional physicians."
What’s the difference in square feet? The office is 4,700 square feet, the new office is about 8,500 square feet. "One of the other beauties of our move is that Capital Health System’s building down the block."