Timothy Dean Langford

When the wishbone offense came to Jonesboro, he ran it to a T. Now this hospital chief of staff turns his precision tuning to prostates and that other big T — testosterone.

Dr. Tim Langford, president of Arkansas Urology and chief of medical staff at Baptist Health Medical Center, is a former Arkansas State quarterback.
Dr. Tim Langford, president of Arkansas Urology and chief of medical staff at Baptist Health Medical Center, is a former Arkansas State quarterback.

There's a story that former Arkansas State football coach Larry Lacewell tells about Dr. Tim Langford. It concerns an afternoon in the fall of 1982 that Langford, then a quarterback in ASU's wishbone offense, spent being chased around and knocked down by an Alabama team coached by Paul "Bear" Bryant.

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“I’ve learned to enjoy leadership. Learned a lot about myself. I see my job as making sure all of our physicians are successful.” — Dr. Tim Langford, president of Arkansas Urology and chief of medical staff at Baptist Health Medical Center

"I thought maybe they had killed Timmy a couple times," Lacewell recalls. "After the game, I asked him, I said, 'Timmy, are you all right?' He looked up at me and said, 'Coach, this was fun.' I thought, 'This guy wants be a doctor? He ain't real smart.'"

Anyone who has spent a few minutes with Langford knows his old coach's kidding. In fact, the old coach held higher professional aspirations for the student-athlete than he did, as we'll see.

He's very smart, and very focused. He has a habit of locking in on patients, interviewers and anything else that comes before him -- not in an unfriendly way, but as if determined to catch every nuance of whatever it is he's seeing. Langford uses that focus to find the time to serve in leadership roles with the Arkansas Urology Clinic, Baptist Health Medical Center and his beloved alma mater, ASU.

"If you look at him throughout his career, he's not a fan on the sidelines, he's on the field," says Frank Ramey, a longtime friend and neighbor. "Tim's just, he's the guy that's going to get the ball."

Langford, 54, says if it wasn't for Lacewell, he might still be involved with the x's and o's of football. He told Lacewell after practice one day that he was thinking about going into coaching. "He said, 'No, you're going to be a physician," Langford said. "He said, 'We need more physicians than we do football coaches.'"

Oh, it's likely that he would have gone into medicine eventually anyway, but given his drive, it's not hard to imagine him being successful at coaching. While he was growing up in Searcy, ballgames were his first love.

But he got to know a few physicians through his father, an insurance agent, and his real professional role model -- Dr. Eugene Joseph -- arrived in town when Langford was 14. "He had a major impact on me. That's where I learned to talk to patients, how to treat people. I copy a lot of his mannerisms, the way he communicated and just made them feel at ease, feel important."

It probably didn't hurt that Joseph, who's now retired, had a daughter, Terri, one year younger than Langford. The two started dating in junior high.

Skinny and fast, Langford played football and basketball and ran track. Quarterbacks Bart Starr and Joe Namath were among his idols. Only one Division 1 college came calling with a scholarship offer. Langford has always suspected -- and Lacewell confirms -- that call came partly at the urging of a young Searcy lawyer and ASU alumnus, and a future governor, Mike Beebe.

"Mike was a wanna-be coach, still is," Lacewell said. "I went and watched [Langford in high school]. They were running the option. I was very impressed. I thought the guy could do it. I didn't recognize how smart he was. But he was tough, you know. He was tough."

That came in handy at ASU, where Lacewell said his early teams were "terrible."

"We were all freshmen and sophomores," Lacewell said. "He [Langford] and another quarterback pulled us through a great 2-9 season. They both played and both about got killed."

Lacewell switched to the wishbone offense the next year, putting more responsibility than ever on his quarterbacks, and the team improved, going a combined 16-16-1 during Langford's last three years.

Lacewell, who went on to work for the Dallas Cowboys, has vivid memories of the college quarterback he coached more than three decades ago.

One is of Langford studying on bus trips home from games. Another is of him finishing his last game, against Memphis State, with cracked ribs. And another is of visiting Langford in a Memphis hospital, where the quarterback had gone with swelling of the brain that developed weeks after a hard hit in a game against Lamar. Langford had been experiencing headaches and nausea but was able to contribute to a win over Tulsa before becoming incoherent. His roommate, Joe Chandler, and girlfriend, Terri Joseph, drove him to the hospital.

"Obviously it didn't affect his brain too bad," Lacewell said. "I've coached a long time. I've coached two or three doctors. Timmy's remarkable in my opinion. Once he concentrates on something, he's there."

Langford calls his time at ASU "the best years of my life," and not just because of football.

Confronted with tougher academic challenges, he got up and studied before breakfast to keep his grades up. He joined a Bible study group for athletes, traveling to Guam on a missionary trip his senior year. And he continued to date the doctor's daughter from his hometown until after graduating from ASU, when they were married.

"It's really where I grew up to be a man," he said.

Langford planned on becoming a family physician like his father-in-law until his last year of medical school, when he spent time with a couple of urologists.

"I liked the variety of work," he said. "You do surgery and you're also in the office practicing medicine. I liked the idea of being specialized in something. And I liked that I wasn't dealing with a lot of chronic problems. ... I could usually identify what the patients' problems were and see them cured, if you will."

Langford graduated from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Medicine in 1988, with Terri working as a physical therapist to pay the bills, then completed his general surgery and urology residencies at UAMS during the next five years, finishing as chief resident. He joined Arkansas Urology in 1993.

'THE WAY IT SHOULD BE'

Langford's sub-specialty today is robotic surgery on the prostate and kidneys, using computers and robotic systems to help perform procedures. The technology is designed to reduce the invasive nature and trauma associated with surgery. And since robotic surgery didn't start being performed until about 2000, it's quite different from what Langford studied in medical school and residency.

"It's a really dynamic field," he said. "I'm not doing anything now that I did 15 years ago. I love the challenge of it."

For his medical duties, Langford spends about half his time in the clinic seeing patients and the rest in the hospital performing surgery. He's president of Arkansas Urology, a position that rotates among partners, and also chief of the medical staff at Baptist Health Medical Center, elected by other doctors at that hospital. In both roles, he serves as a sort of liaison among physicians and nurses, and the health care executives who run the facilities.

"He's incredibly organized and, to me, has endless energy," said Dr. Keith Mooney, a fellow partner at Arkansas Urology. Langford has a ready sense of humor that "has made my practice fun."

Arkansas Urology is the state's largest urology practice, with a dozen specialists and offices in Little Rock, North Little Rock and five other cities.

Langford said there are "fires to put out every day" in his roles at the two institutions but added, "I've learned to enjoy leadership. Learned a lot about myself. I see my job as making sure all of our physicians are successful."

Like physicians everywhere, Langford and his partners have struggled with changes in the health care system related to how the government and private health insurers pay them. The payers are demanding proof of quality, not just quantity, of care. For instance, there are financial penalties (or "disincentives") for providers who see a lot of their patients readmitted with the same complaints.

"Everything is [about] value, the way it should be," Langford said. "We've got to up our game; we've got to improve our quality."

To do that, Langford has been involved in the development of what Arkansas Urology calls "centers of excellence" -- practices headed by physicians who specialize in a particular aspect of urology such as bladder health, kidney stone treatment and prostate cancer.

"We are taking physicians and staff with special interests and training in certain areas, and building pathways" to them for patients, he said. "The ultimate goal of this is to improve patient satisfaction and decrease costs."

Arkansas Urology also made the decision to acquire Epoch Health, a men's health center, after noticing that younger men were flocking to places that administered testosterone shots without what Langford and other specialists consider adequate medical supervision. Testosterone replacement therapy is popularly believed to increase men's energy, confidence and sex drive, but these benefits and their side effects aren't widely agreed upon.

"We've got to deliver or lose this population" of patients, Langford said.

"It isn't all rosy," he said of the state of health care in general. "But I love medicine. I love the relationship with my patients."

September is National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month and for the 11th straight year, Arkansas Urology offers free prostate exams, with an incentive. "Kickoff to Men's Health: The Big Screen Event" will be held at the clinic from 5-8 p.m. Sept. 10; the clinic and Epoch Health will give a flat-screen TV to one participant every 20 minutes. In addition to prostate exams, physicians will screen for potential heart, blood pressure, kidney, bladder and metabolism problems.

"Screening is most important," Langford said. "It can be life-changing. It can be life-saving."

FINE FETTLE

Langford said there has been "a revolution" in the treatment of prostate cancer. Screening every two years from the age of 55 to 69 is now considered adequate for men outside high-risk groups. When cancer is found, surgery and chemotherapy that can adversely affect the quality of life are called for in fewer and fewer cases.

"Only about 20 to 25 percent of prostate cancers are life-threatening," he said. "Seventy percent can be closely monitored and observed."

Advances in testing and diagnoses have improved treatment dramatically, too, he said.

"We have more tools," he said. "Patients are living longer with advanced prostate cancer."

Langford looks like he could still take a few snaps under center for the Red Wolves today. Fresh from the operating room and wearing tennis shoes below his scrubs, he skips down a flight of stairs carrying a box full of papers rather than taking the elevator, waving to a support group of men with prostate cancer who are meeting at the clinic.

Langford works out with weights and a stationary bike most mornings. Terri is his workout partner. They have three children. Aaron, 28, is an entrepreneur in Chicago (with four years of medical school under his belt). Brian, 26, is a third-year medical student at UAMS. Caitlynn, 24, is a first-year nursing student in Dallas.

He plays golf with his sons, loves to travel with his wife and reads anything about World War II and U.S. presidents.

"In the medical arena, it's extremely hard to be successful and not have your family be second, and he's figured out a way to do it," said Ramey, who coached youth football with Langford when they had young sons.

Ramey laughed while recalling his friend's attempt to keep up with those sons on a ski trip in Colorado.

"He said, 'Frank, I don't know if the second bump hurt worse or the first.' That's just his competitive nature, he was not going to let them outdo him."

Last year, Langford's old gridiron champion Beebe appointed him to the ASU board. A decade ago, the Langfords gave the school money to create a sports medicine center. It's clear that after his family and medicine, the school where Langford once got knocked around on Saturdays is a top priority.

"Arkansas State University had such a positive impact on me and my wife," he said. "I just had so many professors and coaches at ASU and in Jonesboro that mentored me and gave me opportunities. I'm paying back my university for what all it did for me."

High Profile on 08/30/2015

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