Hitchcock Clinic

Biography

The Hitchcock Clinic was one of the first organized group practices in the United States, certainly one of the first in New England. Medical practice in the 1920’s (and for decades to follow) was largely a private-practice or “solo” model. It was in this context, in June of 1927, that Dr. John Bowler, a surgeon practicing on Main Street in Hanover, proposed the idea of a multi-specialty group practice to four other Hanover physicians: Percy Bartlet, Harold Des-Brisay, Harry French, and John Gile. Together, they formed a partnership and petitioned the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital (MHMH) Board of Trustees for exclusive rights to practice within the hospital. Three of the four had done their training at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, so in many ways the model of the Hitchcock Clinic was based on the Mayo Clinic model. The plan was approved by the MHMH Board of Trustees in 1927 and from that time onward, the members of the Hitchcock Clinic had, in effect, a sole franchise in practicing within the walls of the hospital.

Initially, the Hitchcock Clinic group practice took the legal form of a partnership. Within the group practice, innovations were adopted without which the long-term success of the rural enterprise would have been compromised. In 1946, the original Hitchcock Clinic partnership was dissolved and the Clinic was incorporated under New Hampshire law as the Hitchcock Clinic, Inc

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