Allergy & Asthma in 2003.
“ That’ s when the practice was expanding our local footprint into a bigger and bigger regional footprint. We only had maybe five offices at the time, and within my first five years, we had tripled that,” he said.“ I discovered in the first few years, that I liked the business side as much as I liked the medical side. Thinking about where we’ re seeing patients driving from, how we can serve those smaller communities better and how we could allow our patients to drive less distance if we were willing to drive a bit farther. We’ re now out of Lexington, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and a lot of smaller communities. I enjoy thinking not only about medicine, medical pathways and prescriptions, but also about logistics of the business – the‘ UPS side’ of things.”
Most of the time, Dr. Coyle is seeing patients in the greater Louisville area, but he also makes trips to their satellite offices in Elizabethtown and Campbellsville( where it all began for him). He said it’ s fun getting to know patients in different communities, bringing fresh perspectives.
“ You could blindfold me and stick me in an exam room and have two or three patients come in and let me talk to them and I could tell you what office I’ m in. There are distinct flavors of people in each town we go to – the diagnoses are the same, but the flavors are different. That helps break up the monotony of looking into noses and listening to lungs and reading skin tests all day.”
While he sees adult and pediatric patients, he’ ll admit to anyone that seeing kids is his favorite part. Even more, it’ s seeing multiple generations of patient families.“ There’ s no better kick than seeing a whole family. I’ ve got more than a dozen four-generation families. I’ ve got one couple in Louisville that I saw as kids when I first started. They didn’ t know each other, they went away to college, met each other and got married, came back to Louisville, and now I see them again as patients and their three kids. That’ s fun and that’ s the old school family practitioner doc that I thought I might want to be originally, so I’ m getting to do that but in a specialty setting.”
One thing that he says most laypeople, and even some medical professionals, may not realize is just how much they can move the needle with allergy treatments. The vast majority of asthma in all patients has a significant allergic component – almost 100 % in children and 80 % in adults, according to Dr. Coyle.
“ These diseases of allergic rhinitis, asthma, atopic dermatitis and food allergies are all tied together and come in a big bundle in a lot of patients. And they may have other diseases that you may not even realize are being impacted. Even with allergy shots( immunotherapy), you can really improve their quality of life, more so than you can do with any cocktail of drugs or avoidance measure. There’ s been so much movement with the immunologic side of allergy, even just since I’ ve started practicing.”
Dr. Coyle values that his practice gives him the leeway to spend time with patients, getting to know them and their health concerns, especially on new patient visits.“ One of the great things that we have is the capacity to spend time with patients. The value of that to the patient is great. The doctor just being quiet for the first five minutes is so important and so rare nowadays just because of the pressures to see volume.”
He is also Gratis Faculty at ULSOM and has medical students or residents shadowing him about a third to half of his time in the office. He compares this training to what he does with so many patients already, which is education of disease and treatment options.
“ With med students and residents, you really see their eyes open, because you get very little allergy training in med school, especially the practical applications of allergy, which you get little to none of. So, opening their eyes to what things mean and what we can do is great,” he said.“ I think that’ s why the pediatric community here in Louisville does such a good job and really understands what we can do with allergies so readily, because they’ ve had such good training with our offices.”
Dr. Coyle married Tobey while they finished residency. When he still had a year left in fellowship, she moved to Winston-Salem with him and worked in public health in the neighboring town of Greensboro. While there, she fell in love with public health, and so for the first 20 years that they were back in Louisville, she was a pediatrician with Family Health Centers, working mostly at their Iroquois office. As a native Texan, she was able to use her Spanish skills to help reach a broader patient population.
They have two sons, Holden, who is a sophomore at the University of Notre Dame, and Dash who is a junior at St. X. Both have been swimmers for years and Dash recently took up tennis. Dr. Coyle said that although his son is already a better tennis player than he is, he does like to hit the courts from time to time. He also enjoys running, hiking, reading and cooking, saying he’ s a big homebody. That being said, they love to travel, especially to Texas, New Jersey and New York to see family, and to European destinations as much as possible.
Once both boys are out of the house and fully on their own, he said he hopes to get more involved with volunteering, both medically and with his church. But for now, he’ s just fine with things exactly as they are.“ As our practice has grown, there have been more opportunities for management or administrative roles. But every time I think of pulling out of clinic, I realize that is what I love to do and what I’ m good at. Allergy is not physically demanding, so as long as I can keep my wits about me, I just want to keep seeing patients at least a few days a week – until they kick me out. That’ s where I feel like I make the biggest difference.”
Kathryn Vance is the Communications and Event Coordinator at the Greater Louisville Medical Society.
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