Bendites who’ve been around a while may very well remember Dr. Steven Knapp and his wife Susan, a nurse practitioner, from their small family medical business. For decades, the couple offered locals a small-town doctor’s office experience, welcoming new babies and taking care of kids and families from their practice, Wall Street Family Practice, on Wall Street in downtown Bend.
“My dad was a family doctor, and I saw how hard he worked. I wasn’t sure that’s something I wanted to do. In fact, I was trying to be a rock and roll star, but that didn’t quite make it,” Knapp told the Source.
Knapp would indeed find himself playing in local bands, but he left the dreams of full-time musicianship behind him when he decided to follow in his dad’s footsteps to medical school at the University of California-Davis. In 1979, he and Susan moved to Central Oregon. He retired from family practice about 10 years ago, and his wife a bit sooner — closing the doors on a kind of care that is quite hard to find today, in the age of consolidation and corporate medicine.
“The most rewarding thing is when people somehow listen to what you say, and not only that, but they can make lifestyle changes.”
“The only small practices I think who can make it now are if they’re concierge practices where you have to pay a fee, either monthly or annually, and you get you get easier access to the doc,” he said. “But that’s foreign to me. I still can’t get used to that idea.”
In the early aughts, a friend of Knapp’s invited him to volunteer at Volunteers in Medicine, the Central Oregon clinic offering health care to low-income adults without health insurance. He worked with patients one day month, then twice a month on his days off from his own practice. In addition, Knapp completed at least eight medical mission trips to Africa, with a group focused on building capacity among local health care teams.
When he officially retired the practice, he stepped up his service at VIM, in the company of many other retired doctors and nurses. The work is fun, he said, without the pressures of running his own business.
“The patients almost all so appreciative, and I feel like you want to make a difference,” Knapp said. He especially enjoys helping people make small but meaningful changes, such as changing their sugar and soda intake to manage high blood sugars.
“The most rewarding thing is when people somehow listen to what you say, and not only that, but they can make lifestyle changes, because it’s hard to make lifestyle changes for most people,” he said.
Helping others helped him, too, Knapp said.
“It doesn’t help to start lecturing people,” he mused. “When I started med school, I never smoked, but I didn’t exercise. I didn’t eat that well. And when I was starting in residency, I go, you know what? It’s really hypocritical to sit here and tell lecture people to quit smoking, to exercise, lose weight and reduce their stress. That’s when I started to live a really healthy lifestyle and exercise most every day and eat well.”
With an increase in the number of people who have been covered by health insurance in recent years, Knapp has been less in need at VIM — but with new regulations around Medicaid, that could very well change in the coming months and years. Meantime, Knapp still enjoys playing upright and electric bass, everywhere from church to a former gig with the Doc Ryan Band.
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