Greene County Daily World: Local News: Linton doctor next in line to head state medical group (09/23/08)

INDIANAPOLIS -- Family physician Frederick R. Ridge, M.D., from Linton, was voted to become president-elect of the Indiana State Medical Association (ISMA) at the organization's 2008 Annual Convention last weekend in Indianapolis.

He will assume the presidency in September 2009 and serve one year as the ISMA's leader.

Dr. Ridge, who is the health officer for Greene County, has served three terms as Speaker of the ISMA's House of Delegates, the organization's policy-making body comprised of approximately 270 members from all around Indiana. As speaker, he presided over the annual meeting of the House of Delegates using rules of parliamentary procedure.

A graduate of the Indiana University School of Medicine, Dr. Ridge completed his residency at IU and then started his rural solo medical practice in 1978. Currently, he is medical director of Ridge Medical and Rural Health Center and is on the medical staff of Greene County General Hospital where he serves on the Executive Committee. In the past, he has served as the hospital's chief of staff and director of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department.

A diplomat of the American Board of Family Medicine and a Fellow with the American Academy of Family Physicians, Dr. Ridge was named Indiana's Family Physician of the Year in 1997. For three decades, he has been team physician for Linton-Stockton High School's football team. He also is a clinical associate professor at IU School of Medicine in the family medicine program.

The ISMA represents approximately 8,300 Indiana physicians from every county in Indiana. Since 1849, the association has carried out a mission of promoting sound health care policy in the public, private and governmental sectors and supporting continuing medical education for the state's doctors.