{"id":162275,"date":"2020-07-01T07:00:46","date_gmt":"2020-07-01T11:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?post_type=school-college-post&p=162275"},"modified":"2021-04-13T15:22:20","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T19:22:20","slug":"dr-roy-beebe-longtime-orthopedic-surgeon-retires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2020\/07\/dr-roy-beebe-longtime-orthopedic-surgeon-retires\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Roy Beebe, Longtime Orthopedic Surgeon, Retires"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dr.
At a recent gathering to celebrate Dr. Roy Beebe’s retirement, his colleagues surprised him with an induction to the newly created UConn Musculoskeletal Institute Hall of Fame. (Photo by Erika Ivanov, June 19, 2020)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After 38 years as an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Roy Beebe is ready to enjoy retirement.<\/p>\n

Beebe has been a fixture in the Farmington Valley since 1982, when he joined a private practice in Avon, partnering with the late Dr. Herbert Pasternak, who a decade earlier had performed the first total hip replacement surgery in Connecticut.<\/p>\n

Beebe also had an academic appointment in the UConn School of Medicine since then. In 2012 his Avon office became part of UConn Health and he joined the faculty as a full-time attending physician, caring for patients while also training the next generation of orthopedic surgeons.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been the best move of my life,\u201d Beebe says. \u201cWhen you\u2019re dealing with medical students and residents, you have to be at the top of your game. These residents are always questioning us. Our job is to teach them and make them exceptional doctors and surgeons.\u201d<\/p>\n

“I think I\u2019ve gotten more out of them then they\u2019ve gotten out of me. It\u2019s been a phenomenal experience.”<\/p>\n

Dr. Roy Beebe<\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For the last eight years, while continuing to see is patients in Avon, he\u2019s been treating a wide variety of orthopedic conditions, which includes performing hip and knee replacements at the UConn John Dempsey Hospital in Farmington.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a transition. I know I\u2019m going to miss the patients, I\u2019m going to miss the staff I work with every day,\u201d Beebe says. \u201cI’ll miss working with the residents most. I love seeing a chief resident teaching a first-year resident how to do a total hip or total knee, and some of the subtleties that are there. I think I\u2019ve gotten more out of them then they\u2019ve gotten out of me. It\u2019s been a phenomenal experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ten years before joining the UConn Health faculty, Beebe received his medical degree from the UConn School of Medicine as part of the Class of 1972, the school\u2019s first graduating class. After an internal medicine internship at Hartford Hospital, two years in Germany with the U.S. Army as a commanding officer and acting division surgeon, an emergency medicine residency at the University of Kentucky, and two years of private practice, he returned in 1979 to join UConn\u2019s orthopedic surgery residency program. He followed that with a knee and hip replacement mini-fellowship at M.A.R. Freeman in London.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think by 1982 it had become apparent that hip and knee replacement operations really do work,\u201d Beebe says. \u201cWhat we do today with knee replacements is probably 20% different. The basic science had been there, there\u2019s no question. We perfected it with better imaging, better techniques, better sizing. Hip replacement and knee replacement has been a progressive continuum.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Dr.
Dr. Olga Solovyova, an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in total hip and knee replacements, sees patients at UConn Health’s Avon office and operates at the UConn John Dempsey Hospital in Avon. (Photo by Tina Encarnacion)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For many of Beebe\u2019s patients, that continuum leads to Dr. Olga Solovyova<\/a>, an orthopedic surgeon with elite training in total joint replacement who joined the UConn Health faculty last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was an incredible medical student at the UConn School of Medicine, and they did everything in their power to have her do her residency here,\u201d Beebe says. \u201cShe decided to go on to NYU and did a residency in New York with Dr. Nachum Levin, who\u2019s a very premiere orthopedic surgeon. She\u2019s an extremely nice person. She\u2019s exceptionally well trained. She\u2019s very factual. She\u2019s very calm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solovyova fellowship trained in adult reconstruction and hip and knee arthroplasty at the University of Western Ontario. She also holds a bachelor\u2019s degree from the UConn School of Allied Health.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are all very sad to see Dr. Beebe go, but I look forward to working in Avon with the wonderful staff out there and continuing to serve the community,\u201d Solovyova says. \u201cI know I have big shoes to fill and I hope I can provide as good of care as he has over the years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another provider UConn Health\u2019s Avon patients will get to know better is nurse practitioner Jill Arcari-Couture<\/a>, who will provide care across a wide range of orthopedic problems including general assessments, nonoperative care, joint injections, and postoperative care in conjunction with Solovyova and other UConn Health surgeons. Other care specialties available in Avon include foot and ankle, hand, and spine.<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Beebe has been a pillar of orthopedic surgery in our area for years, literally treating generations of patients over four decades,\u201d says Dr. Isaac Moss<\/a>, chair of the UConn Health Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. \u201cWhile we are sad to say goodbye to an incredible colleague, I am very excited about the future of our arthroplasty program at UConn Health. With the addition of Dr. Solovyova to our team, we have a core group of superb surgeons who practice with the most up-to-date procedures and techniques, allowing for faster recovery and often alleviates the need for a hospital stay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beebe and his wife, Arlene, are celebrating their 50th<\/sup> anniversary this month. For the last 30 of those years they lived in a house on Main Street in Farmington, where they raised four adopted children. They\u2019re moving to Alexandria, Virginia, to be closer to their oldest daughter, Jenna, and their granddaughter, Saige, who turns 3 later this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe timing is right,\u201d Beebe says.<\/p>\n

Learn more about orthopedic surgery at the UConn Musculoskeletal Institute.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Olga Solovyova succeeds him as the total hip and knee replacement expert at UConn Health’s orthopedic and sports medicine practice in Avon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":162266,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2287,1868],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2010],"class_list":["post-162275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-orthopedics","category-meds"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-21 12:35:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162275"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171437,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162275\/revisions\/171437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/162266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162275"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=162275"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=162275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}