“I liked medicine because it was hands on,” admits Dr. Eric R. George, “It’s such a rewarding profession.” Although the Yeager Scholar was swinging on a professional pendulum between law (both his brother and father were attorneys) and medicine, George chose to be a doctor and went on to study at the Marshall University School of Medicine. He completed a General Trauma Surgery Residency at Michigan State University, a Fellowship in Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery at Grand Rapids Area Medical Education Center and an Orthopaedic Hand & Upper Extremity Reconstructive Fellowship at the Integrated Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona.
In 2003, George founded Omega Hospital, the first physician-owned hospital in the Greater New Orleans Area. Now the leading surgery center in the area, Omega offers a patient-focused facility that emphasizes the individual with “caring and compassion.” The luxury hospital offers rooms with robes, mini-bars, coffee-makers, microwaves and even another bed reserved for caring relatives and loved ones. With over 50 physicians representing 19 medical and surgical specialties, Omega takes pride in its preoperative diagnostic requirements which meet or exceed state and federal standards.
When he is not managing anywhere from 30-40 patients a week, George is also an active businessman and philanthropist in the New Orleans community and beyond. He owns numerous properties and companies including oil and gas pipeline properties in both the U.S. and the Gulf of Mexico, an international medical supply company, restaurants franchises and the Royal Orleans and Windsor Court Hotels. George is on the Board of Directors at the Tipitina’s Foundation that raised over $2 million this year at the “Instruments a Comin’” benefit which supports local school band programs and benefactor to the St. Martin’s Episcopal School “George Cottage,” an early education program, in Metairie.
Back in his second year of residency, George married his teenage sweetheart who just happened to be the Homecoming Queen from the rival high school. Together they raised two daughters, Cassidy and Chloe whose foundation developed a school for orphans in Mombasa, Kenya in 2010. Chloe is now a sophomore at Cambridge University focused on International Relations in Government and Cassidy is about to study Fine Arts at New York University. George is proud of his daughters accomplishments, “I always taught them to first love what they do, and always try to make other people happy.”
*Article originally published in the June 2013 issue of New Orleans Living Magazine
