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Two neurosurgeons join Northwest Healthcare

by The Daily Inter Lake
| September 11, 2011 7:00 PM

Northwest Healthcare has added spine surgery and cranial surgery specialists Dr. Frank Bishop and Dr. T.C. Origitano to the practice of Northern Rockies Neurosurgical Associates.

Bishop and Origitano join Drs. Douglas Griffith and Benny Brandvold in providing neurosurgical services to the community.

Bishop specializes in spine and general cranial neurosurgery and has a special interest in complex spinal surgery using both traditional and minimally invasive techniques.

He treats a wide range of spinal disorders, including degenerative disease and deformity, trauma and spinal cord injury, spine tumors, and infections.

Origitano specializes in cranial (skull-base) surgery for patients with brain tumors, aneurysms and other vascular conditions of the brain. Over the course of his career, he has completed more than 1,000 surgeries for brain tumors and 500 for vascular abnormalities.

Prior to joining the Northwest Healthcare medical staff, Origitano served as professor and chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery at Loyola University Medical Center Stritch School of Medicine in Maywood, Illinois — a position he held for the past 13 years.

In Illinois, he also served as the medical director of the Clinical Neuroscience Service Line and co-director of the Center for Cranial Base Surgery at the Loyola University Medical Center of the Loyola University Health System.

Origitano completed a doctorate in neuro-biochemistry at Loyola University Chicago and a medical degree at the Stritch School of Medicine of Loyola University Chicago. He completed his neurological surgery residency at the Loyola University Medical Center, which included training at Queens Square in London, England, and at Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan.

Bishop attended the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and completed an internship and residency in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City.

Most recently, he completed a spine fellowship at the Neurological Institute at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio.

No stranger to the Flathead Valley, he worked at Kalispell Regional Medical Center in the summer of 2010 as a locum tenens neurosurgeon, which is how he was introduced to the area. He said he enjoyed working with the hospital and community so much that he decided to work here full time.

When not practicing medicine, Origitano enjoys spending time with his family, hiking and skiing. He looks forward to the lifestyle that the Flathead Valley has to offer, especially honing his fly-fishing skills.

Bishop originally is from Seattle, and his wife, Yoshiko, is from Tokyo, where they met. They have two children, Lina and Kenzi, who are 13 and 9, respectively.

They work hard to preserve their culture and language, and speak Japanese at home. They enjoy traveling, hiking, sports, photography, and international cuisine.