The Valparaiso Health Center of St. Mary Medical Center welcomed two new family physicians to the community recently: Christopher Osan, MD, and Alyssa Pagliere Osan, MD. The husband-and-wife team is looking forward to serving patients and families in Valparaiso and throughout Porter County.
The Osans consider themselves a team not just at home, but also in their practice. It is a dynamic that served them well in medical school and throughout their residency, according to Pagliere Osan, who is known to her patients as “Dr. Pagliere”.
“What’s nice about being together is that we get to bounce ideas off of each other,” she explained. “It’s very nice to be on an even playing field in that respect. We made each other better students. Both of our grades improved in medical school once we started dating. Some people don’t like to work with their spouses, but we actually make each other better.”
Pagliere, 30, grew up in Sacramento, Calif. Her father was an internal medicine physician, so medicine was always a familiar part of her life. Osan, 38, is a Northwest Indiana native. He was born in Hammond and raised in Munster. His mother is a dentist in Lansing and his father is retired from a career at Inland Steel. Osan earned his master’s degree in Biology from Purdue Northwest.
The Osans met in medical school and completed their residency together at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso earlier this year.
The couple wanted to establish their practice close to family, either in California or the Chicago area. St. Mary Medical Center stood out among the dozens of hospitals and health systems under consideration.
“I had more than 100 phone interviews, and (I could tell) the atmosphere they have here is really friendly,” Osan said. “Although Community Healthcare System is huge, St. Mary Medical Center didn’t give me the feeling that they were just going to plug me in like a cog, and I’m just going to be another part of the machine. I felt that they were really looking to hire physicians, build practices, and work with us. We really liked that.”
St. Mary Medical Center CEO Janice Ryba welcomed the Osans to the Valparaiso Health Center.
“Dr. Christopher Osan and Dr. Alyssa Pagliere Osan are terrific additions to Community Healthcare System and to St. Mary Medical Center’s healthcare team in Porter County,” Ryba said. “They are providing outstanding primary care to patients and families. We are excited that they have chosen to establish their practice with us and to raise their family here in Northwest Indiana.”
As new parents to a baby daughter, Zoey, the Osans understand the importance of high-quality, accessible primary care to families in the community.
“His cousins have five kids between them, and they’re all under the age of four,” Pagliere said. “We just had a baby, so she’s going to have cousins to grow up with and that is very exciting for us.”
“That is the reason we chose to practice in this area,” Osan agreed. “Family.”
The Valparaiso Health Center of St. Mary Medical Center is located near the intersection of State Road 49 and Burlington Beach Rd/CR 500 in Valparaiso. It offers Immediate Care services seven days per week from 8 a.m. – 8 p.m., along with primary-care physicians and specialists, clinical lab services, diagnostic imaging and neuro diagnostic services and rehabilitation services.
Contact the Valparaiso Health Center at 219-286-3700. For a free physician referral, call 219-836-3477 or toll-free at 866-836-3477.
St. Mary Medical Center is one of three hospitals of Community Healthcare System that also includes Community Hospital in Munster and St. Catherine Hospital in East Chicago. To learn more about the physicians and services of Community Healthcare System or to locate an outpatient care or surgery center near you, visit www.comhs.org.
