Photo by Jeff Newton

GERIATRICS

Although Dr. Irving M. Rollingher has been married for 24 years and has two children, he doesn’t want to talk about his family. He’s the type of geriatric doctor who’s focused on the issues.
 
“I’m more interested in people caring about geriatrics than the fact that my daughter likes snowboarding in Boulder,” he says, his left hand half covering his face.

And the main issue Rollingher is concentrated on as a doctor, a teacher and a member of his community, is aging gracefully.

Rollingher, a native of Canada, thought he wanted to be an internal medicine doctor when he was interviewed by a physician at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. But that desire didn’t last long.
 
“I said, ‘Internal medicine,’ and he said, ‘Oh, geriatrics?’” Rollingher recounts, his silver, thin-framed glasses resting in his hand. “I said, ‘No, I don’t want to do geriatrics. Old people, they’re difficult.’”

But as he saw more and more medical problems specific to the elderly, he couldn’t turn back.
 
“I began to realize I had an affinity for it, because they started to send me all the geriatric cases,” he says. “When you declare yourself in one sort of direction in medicine, people send you all of those problems. It’s sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
 
And Rollingher, the geriatric doctor, was born. After a residency program at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver and a fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles, Rollingher felt ready to settle down into a practice. But because of the more limited medical service in Canada, he stayed in the United States.
 
After a visit to Scottsdale, then a growing medical community, Rollingher says he knew it was right for him.
 
“I instantaneously fell in love with the environment,” he says of the Valley and the Scottsdale Healthcare system. “[Scottsdale Healthcare] felt very progressive for a system of community-based hospitals.”
 
Rollingher says community is one of the most important – and most basic – concepts for every hospital.
 
“I believe healthcare has to start at the community level and sort of branch out from there,” he says. “Within that community, there are physicians, hospitals and patients. If we want the best possible healthcare system, we have to bring all of those elements together.”

By establishing this sort of community, elderly people can age more gracefully, which Rollingher says is one of the hardest challenges older generations face.
 
“Aging successfully is growing dependent gracefully,” he says. “I think a lot of what we are doing as a society, we must ensure the safety and protection of our seniors in the same way we ensure the safety and protection of our children.”

 While there are many outreach programs, day cares, home healthcare agencies and hospices available for seniors in the Valley, society as a whole isn’t doing enough, he adds.
 
 “The more we give to our older people the better,” Rollingher explains.