Dr. Richard Allen Ray, MD

My interest in medicine comes from my family. My father is a physician, working at Los Angeles County Medical Center for forty years; my mother is a nurse who ran the Poison Information Center in LA for many years. Both of my parents worked long hours for organizations that focused on healthcare for the community, and they loved their jobs. With their example it was natural for me (and two of my sisters) to pick medicine as a career.

After my training, Kaiser Permanente seemed a natural choice for me. Its philosophy is based on patient care rather than business, fitting with my earliest concepts of what medicine should be. I also like that Kaiser Permanente has an integrated system. The increasing specialization and complexity of medical practice tend to fracture the care that patients receive. Kaiser Permanente's system offers the opportunity to keep care coordinated, and we strive to do so.

I chose pathology as a specialty because it primarily involves solving puzzles - looking at …biopsies and other tests while trying to reach a diagnosis. Pathology also covers almost every area of medicine, so it is always interesting. The point is to get complete and timely answers to help patients - for treatment, for their understanding, or so they can relax when the diagnosis is benign. I try to make sure that the patients I see for fine needle aspiration biopsies get the results as soon as possible and understand what the diagnosis means.

My outside interests are traveling (New Zealand, Egypt, Japan, Africa, Russia), working on my 1965 Corvettes, reading (mysteries, sci-fi, and non-fiction), and doing crossword puzzles and acrostics.