The story begins with a headline in the White Bear Free Press from Tuesday, April 8th 1980. The headline read, "Dr. Hustad plans to open office in pediatrics".
Dr. Hustad , a native Minnesotan hailing from Duluth, came to St. Paul's Macalester College and graduated with a bachelor's degree in biology. In 1976 she graduated from the University of Minnesota Medical School. After the completion of specialty training in pediatrics and residency at the Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO. she returned to MN and worked in Apple Valley before opening the White Bear Lake clinic.
When Dr. Hustad hung out her shingle in White Bear Lake in 1980 there weren't any pediatric practices in the area. Her clinic was the first to keep the office open later during the week to accommodate working parents.
In 1991 we opened an additional office in Shoreview. This office served us well until 2009 when the building owner decided to sell the property to a developer who had plans to put a pharmacy at that location.
After a 9-year partnership ended we became Northern Lights Pediatrics in October 2004. Our group was complete with Dr. Hustad, Dr. Knapp, Dr. Tuohy, Dr. McCabe, and Dr. Joseph. The five physicians working as one had partnered together to continue to uphold the commitment to the community and now not only were we open evenings, we are open 7 days per week.
After 28 years in practice, Dr. Margaret Hustad retired in January 2008. She passed on the care of her patients, the clinics and the community to her partners, Dr. Knapp, Tuohy, McCabe, and Joseph.
We welcomed two new Doctors to our group. Dr. James Marquardt in October 2006 and Dr. Suchitra Rondla in January of 2008. You can read more about their individual training and interests under the "About Us" tab.
2009 has been an exciting year for us at Northern Lights Pediatrics. After closing both our White Bear Lake and Shoreview offices we opened two brand new offices. The first to open in June of 2009 was our beautiful and much larger Vadnais Heights office, located just 3 miles west of the old White Bear Lake office. September 14th brought about our much anticipated and long overdue opening of our Hugo Clinic. We are so happy to finally be of service to the Hugo area and would like to thank all those that waited for us to come to Hugo.
With much sadness we all had to say goodbye to Dr. Anne Marie Tuohy. She has relocated to Maine and for now she is enjoying being a stay at home mom. We all still hold out hope that someday she will return to Minnesota and to us, the practice that she worked so hard to make what it is today.
July 2009 had us welcoming another new provider to our group, Patti Breen CPNP (Certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner). Patti brings to our group 37 years of experience caring for children in Ecuador, Appalachia, and throughout the Twin Cities. She is proficient in Spanish and also continues to be an adjunct Professor of Nursing at the College of St. Catherine.
In April 2010 Northern Lights Pediatrics celebrated our 30th year in practice! Thinking back we have watched thousands of kids move into adulthood. We have even seen some of our patients return to our clinic with there own children. April also brought about another milestone for us. We had a new physician join our practice. Dr. Jason Cook was very excited to be joining our group and moving back to Minnesota.
The story does not end there, stay tuned for the future plans of Northern Lights Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine.