Director, Department of Clinical Research and Department of Professional Services and Accreditation, 1950–1954
Throughout his medical career, Walter E. Batchelder, MD, FACS, was driven by a self-described focus on cancer control, with this passion leading to appointments in 1950 as assistant director of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) and director of its department of clinical research. Born in New Hampshire in 1911, Dr. Batchelder completed his medical training at Boston University in 1939, undertook internships at Chapin and Rhode Island Hospitals in Providence and Rhode Island from 1939-1942 and completed his residency in obstetrics at the Providence Lying-In Hospital in 1942.
As with many of his colleagues at that time, Dr. Batchelder then became a member of the United States Army Medical Corps and served as a Major with the Third Army in the European Theater until discharged in 1946. Upon leaving the military he worked as the director of student health services at the University of New Hampshire and in 1948 took over the directorship of the division of cancer control of the Rhode Island State Department of Health until joining ACS two years later.
One of his most significant accomplishments at ACS was the revision of the Minimum Standards of Cancer Clinics in General Hospitals, a general essay created by the ACS board of regents in 1930. Originally designed to show minimum standards by which cancer clinics should be operated, its focus was on “emphasizing the necessity of making the benefits of contemporaneous knowledge of cancer available to each and every cancer patient in the county.”
Primarily unchanged since its release, Dr. Batchelder was instrumental in working with the Commission on Cancer to produce a more prescriptive and effective document. In 1953 it became the Minimum Requirements for Approval of a Cancer Program, establishing many of the standards still in place today, including the formation of an in-house cancer committee, the founding of a cancer registry, and the prerequisite that cancer-related continuing education activities be an on-going part of a facility’s operations.
Upon submitting his letter of resignation from ACS in 1954 to take the medical director position with the cancer commission of the California Medical Association, Dr. Batchelder wrote, “My stay with the College has been an experience unequaled in my brief medical career, an experience that has greatly widened my professional horizons. I have gained much, and it is hoped that my contribution has in some small measure helped the College maintain its well-earned prestige in not only the minds of the medical profession but also the general public.”
Written by Miles Rush, MS, ATC, PMP