PARK CITY -- To almost everyone in town, he's Winnie.
His formal name is Dr. Robert Winn, but then to many people who have come to know him, admire his skill and appreciate his friendship the past 22 years, that is exactly the point.They've known him since he came to town from Pennsylvania and hung out his shingle in 1978 at a satellite clinic for Holy Cross Hospital of Salt Lake City in a mobile trailer across from Park City Mountain Resort with Robert Evers and Tom Schwenk. He's been in civic groups and given local athletes their physicals for token fees and slept on a cot to provide 24-hour service and doctored walk-ins on Saturdays and trained city EMTs and helped rig a traveling free clinic for the town's burgeoning Hispanic population.
"A guy like Winnie has the living DNA of a doctor. He's as close to the model of any I can think of, of what a family doctor should be," said Phil Thompson, president of Industrial Supply Co. in Salt Lake City, who lives in Park City and is proud to claim Winnie as his longtime primary-care physician.
And like a bunch of people here, it bugs Thompson that the University of Utah Health Network is in the process of terminating the contracts of Dr. Winn and several other equally loved veteran physicians at the Park City Family Health and Emergency Center, 1665 Bonanza.
In a reorganizational move, with an eye to cost-cutting, UUHN plans to trim the number of doctors from 17 to 10. It says its aim is improving Summit County health care.
UUHN said in a press release last week that it bought the practice from five physicians -- Winn, Robert Barnett, Robert Evers, John Hanrahan and Cress Bohnn -- agreeing to "market-based financial compensation," plus 5-year risk-free employment contracts for the five doctors. Each physician accepted $100,000 to agree to a non-compete clause, prohibiting them from practicing in Summit or Wasatch counties for two years after the contract ended.
The release also mentioned considerable "confusion and misrepresentation" surrounding the change.
"Over the past five years the University has contributed nearly $10 million in direct health-care services and subsidies to Summit County," the release said. "The university believes these facts speak clearly to which party is truly committed to Summit County."
Yet many Park City residents remain irate at the moves. They've formed a group called Rally Around the Docs (RADs) and are holding a meeting at 7 tonight at the Jim Santy Auditorium in the Park City Library, 1255 Park Ave.
"This meeting comes as a result of hundreds of people calling and e-mailing each other because they've been astounded the university would even think of . . . I'll use the word robbing . . . us of our doctors who have meant so much to us," said Joan Calder, past director of the Park City Chamber of Commerce, who helped form RADs.
"This has become a real community crisis for us," Calder said.
"The feeling of outrage has really taken on a life of its own," said Gene Moser, a retired insurance executive, former Summit County commissioner and head of RADs. "These doctors have always been there for my wife (Laverne) and my children, holding our hands at times like we were the only patients they had."
Winn said the idea of losing such close relationships hurts. He acknowledges signing the non-compete clause but also said the doctors were assured they could continue working at the clinic after the contract ended. Technically, they've been invited to reapply, but the doctors feel the underlying message is: Don't bother.
"If they just said costs are the deal, I could take it a lot easier," Winn said. "But they've tried to make out like we're lazy and not working hard for our money."