From a mom with no college degree to a doctor, woman follows dream
New OB/GYN joins CMH health centers
By Daniel Wolowicz camarillo@theacorn.com

Patricia Lanter knows what it means to follow a dream.

Patricia Lanter

Nearly 20 years ago, the Camarillo resident was without a college degree and the mother of two baby boys. Her dream was to become a doctor.

Although Lanter only had an associate of arts degree from a community college in Arizona, she took a chance and sent out applications to a number of medical schools. It's a little known fact that med school applicants don't need a bachelor's degree to be accepted.

Lanter, 30 at the time, was accepted not to one, but two medical schools.

"My husband likes to make a joke of it," Lanter said with a chuckle. "He says that I went from an AA to an MD and skipped the BS."

Lanter said it's likely her acceptance to med school was due to a number of reasons. Her scores for the Medical College Admissions Test were high, and she held a high 3.9 GPA in junior college.

The recruiters may have also been swayed by the fact that Lanter had proven her ability to work well under pressure with her military experience.

She was a staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, where she worked as crew chief on an A-7D Corsair fighter jet.

Toward the end of her four years in the service, Lanter was temporarily assigned to a special team that took part in a bombing competition between the U.S. and the Royal Air Force. Lanter's team won.

Splitting her time between raising her young boys and attending med school, Lanter eventually graduated from the University of Arizona's College of Medicine. She went on to complete her internship and residency at the University of Utah and Affiliated Hospitals in Salt Lake City.

Board certified in obstetrics and gynecology, Lanter recently joined the staff at the Community Memorial Health System's Camarillo Center for Family Health.

Since moving to Camarillo in 2004, Lanter worked with the Buenaventura Medical Group, seeing patients in both Ojai and Ventura. That changed this summer when Kaiser Permanente bought Buenaventura's eight clinics in Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo. The deal was set to close by the end of the year, and the crew chief turned doctor found herself facing an uncertain future.

Lanter said that, like many of Buenaventura's associate physicians who didn't hold stock in the company, she didn't know about the ownership change until the day before the two healthcare providers went public with their deal. Lanter was told that once the clinics changed names, it was unlikely she'd still have a job.

It didn't take long before Lanter made her late September move to the family health centers, and nearly half her patients followed her.

"Probably half the patients that I saw in the first week are patients that came from Buenaventura," Lanter said. She added that a handful of patients from as far away as Ojai have found her at the family health center on Arneill Road.

Lanter said she enjoys OBGYN because it gives her a chance to help women understand their bodies and feel more comfortable in a doctor's office.

"You'd be amazed by how many women don't even know what a Pap smear is or what it does for them," Lanter said. "I make it a point to kind of explain each thing that I'm doing, why I'm doing it and what it tells us."

Lanter divides her schedule between the family health center in Camarillo and the Airport Marina location in Oxnard.

Throughout west Ventura County, there are nine centers for family health that serve more than 175,000 patients a year, according to hospital officials. The clinics are associated with Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura and Ojai Valley Community Hospital.

Now a mother of three- Christopher, 24, Jason, 23 and Heather, 13-Lanter lives with her husband of 26 years, David.

Having realized her dream in spite of improbable odds, Lanter said good things come to those who believe in themselves.

"If you have a goal, if you have a dream, you should look at what you need to do and decide what you're willing to do to achieve it and not let other people say you can't do that," Lanter said. "People shouldn't ever sell themselves short."