ProfileMichael A. Lobatz, M.D

Physician who rehabilitates ‘brain injured’ troops joins
RSF Foundation’s Armed Forces group to assist military families

By Arthur Lightbourn

Dr. Michael Lobatz has seen first hand the damage that a blast from a roadside explosive device can inflict on a Marine and the repercussions often experienced by the soldier’s family.
As a neurologist and medical director of Scripps Rehabilitation Center in Encinitas for the past 12 years, Lobatz has been involved in the treatment of some 100 active military who suffered concussive brain injuries from improvised explosive devices (IED’s) in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Michael A. Lobatz, M.D. Photo/Jon Clark

Scripps Memorial’s inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation center was approached at the beginning of the current wars to treat the overflow of active duty brain-injured casualties because of its experience in neurological rehabilitation and its proximity to Camp Pendleton Marine Base.
The center, that treats both civilians and military, has a 30-bed acute facility for inpatients and outpatient facility that currently treats 300 patients daily.
“In terms of treatment [for brain injured patients],” Lobatz said, “we do what we call cognitive therapy where we teach people to strengthen their memories by doing repetitive memory tasks and if they can’t strengthen it, we teach them to adaptive techniques.”

Lobatz recalls that in the initial days of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military was overwhelmed by the numbers of troops who suffered concussive brain injuries and they enlisted civilian hospitals like Scripps to help rehabilitate the injured soldiers.
“Now they are tooled up to treat them,” Lobatz said, “so we are getting fewer of those cases.”
Lobatz’ experience in treating wounded combat troops prompted him recently to extend even further by joining the Rancho Santa Fe Foundation’s board of directors as an advisor to the philanthropic foundation’s Armed Forces Interest Group (AFIG).
AFIG was formed in 2008 to provide long-term, sustainable financial support to local Marine and Navy families of junior rank enlistees whose paychecks are barely above subsistence level. Grant support is channeled through established organizations, such as the San Diego Armed Forces YMCA, the Military Outreach Ministry, the USO and the Injured Marine Semper Fi.
“I’m particularly interested in helping military families and supporting them as best I can in terms of their health and welfare,” Lobatz said. “Hopefully, I can help in raising money for the foundation and in assessing grant applications.”
We interviewed Lobatz in his office at Scripps Memorial Hospital in Encinitas.
He’s 6 feet tall, gray-haired, with glasses. His idea of fun is to backpack into wilderness areas and trek hundreds of miles in all kinds of weather.
Lobatz is a native of Chicago.
His dad was a factory purchasing agent and his mom was a manicurist. Lobatz was the youngest of three children.
Asked what initially attracted him to study medicine, he said, “I was always fascinated by the brain and how it worked. I actually got my bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering [from the University of Illinois] so it was natural for me to go into medicine and, in particular, to become a neurologist,” although not immediately.

He developed a fascination with computers and their potential, which has continued to this day.
“For instance, right now my private group medical practice is completely paperless and totally electronic. And we were one of the early adopters of that. We’ve been using electronic medical records for the benefit of our patients for about seven years.”
While studying for his undergraduate engineering degree and to help pay his way through college, he ran big IBM mainframe computers on the graveyard shift at Sears’ data center in Chicago.
Afterwards, he went into neuropharmacology research as a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois School of Medicine for three years before deciding he wanted to do something more than research and applied to enter the medical school.
He earned his M.D. in 1977 and promptly headed to San Diego to complete his internship in medicine/neurology and his residency in neurology at UCSD and to serve as chief resident, after which he went into private practice and was board certified in 1983.
Throughout a career spanning more than 30 years, he has specialized in the treatment and rehabilitation of brain injury, stroke, Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease, and is currently the principle investigator on two major medical trials for the treatment of both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
As for the general state of medicine these days, he said, “I think that we are obviously in a period of unprecedented change brought on by health care reform. I have a lot of concern about how that is going to affect the medical profession and hospitals and patients.
“I believe there are great opportunities to improve the care of the population in general, reduce waste, and improve the quality of care and safety of patients, both as physicians and in hospitals. But I believe that it is highly complex and is going to require a lot of thought to achieve the success that our population deserves.”
He cautions that “We don’t approach this too fast and make mistakes that are going to be very costly.”
As vice president of medical affairs at Scripps Encinitas, he said he is delighted to be involved in crafting the future health care of the community.
“I live in two worlds,” he said, “as a physician and as a hospital administrator, and that gives me a unique perspective.”
Asked if he is optimistic about the future, he said. “You know I run a rehabilitation center, so I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy. And I’ve learned through the years, there are always going to be opportunities to improve and to make things better.”
Scripps Encinitas is in the midst of a major $200 million multi-phase expansion, including more beds, new operating rooms, expanded emergency facilities and a 900-car parking garage.