New NBHH provider brings women’s health services closer to home

Achieving and maintaining good health just got a bit easier for women in the area with the addition of an experienced OB/GYN provider, Dr. Brenda Camp, to the staff at North Big Horn Hospital this month. Camp will lead the way in the much-anticipated expansion of women’s health services at the hospital.

“We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Brenda Camp to our community and are confident that she will provide exceptional and compassionate care to the women in Lovell and beyond,” said hospital CEO Eric Connell. “We are honored that Dr. Camp has chosen to join our team, and we are already witnessing her dedication to our patients. In just her first week, she has demonstrated a genuine connection with our community and has begun to make a positive impact on the lives of those she serves.”

Camp brings 14 years of experience to her new job from her most recent work in women’s healthcare at Kaiser Permanente in Denver. It was her first job out of medical school. She said she received a wide range of experience at Kaiser, seeing, at times, up to 20 patients per day in her practice.

Camp grew up in Wyoming (Casper and Cheyenne) and spent many years in Colorado earning her medical degree and working as a physician at Kaiser. She said she and her family are enjoying a peaceful life in the Big Horn Basin, where the lack of noise and heavy traffic is a welcomed change.

Camp completed both her undergraduate and graduate work at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins and her medical school training at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver. She also completed her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver. She brings a wealth of experience in women’s health, including a special interest in minimally invasive surgery, endometriosis, uterine fibroids and pelvic pain. She is certified by the American board of Obstetricians and Gynecologists since 2014 and received additional certification in 2021, adding her focused practice designation in minimally invasive gynecologic surgeries to her credentials.

Dr. Camp is married with three children ages 8 through 18. Her husband is a stay-at-home dad, who she said makes her career so much easier.

“I don’t know how I would have done it without him,” she said. “When I’m at work I can focus on my patients and what I’m doing and not worry about anything else.

“I grew up in Casper and Cheyenne, which are a lot smaller than Denver, for sure, but this is the smallest place we’ve ever lived. I didn’t have a lot of experience with the Big Horn Basin growing up. My parents hunted near Cody over the years when I was a kid, so we would come up here sometimes.”

Although she and her husband are not very interested in hunting and fishing, they do enjoy outdoor activities as a family.

“We like to hike and camp and mountain bike,” she said. “The times we’ve been up to the mountains here it hasn’t been crowded at all. It’s just so much more peaceful here compared to Denver.”

She recounted a recent outing where she and her family waited two and a half hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic to see the fall colors in the mountains near Denver. 

“We love it here,” she said. “It’s just so beautiful with mountains in every direction.”

Camp will be providing general gynecology services like exams and birth control services, as well as performing minimally invasive surgeries at NBHH. Though she won’t be delivering babies, she will provide both pre- and post-natal services, saving her patients countless hours of driving elsewhere for those services.

“There (at Kaiser) I was a referral surgeon for more difficult gynecology surgeries,” she explained. “That’s kind of my thing.”

Those surgeries, which came from upwards of 60 referring providers, included hysterectomies and surgeries involving endometriosis, laparoscopic surgeries and more. 

She said she’s excited about using the robotic equipment, especially in conjunction with more complex surgeries, noting that, so far, she has found NBHH to have “all the amenities of a larger hospital with a more personalized experience for both the patient and the provider.”

She said she’s also enjoying getting to know the staff at NBHH, which she has found to be “kind and helpful” and appreciates the fact that she’ll be working with the same team most of the time compared to working with different people on a regular basis, like she did in a larger hospital setting.

“It’s so nice always having the same team to work with here, that knows me, unlike the bigger hospital where sometimes it was all new people in the room and felt like starting over every time,” Camp explained. “Working with a smaller staff is different, in a good way. You get to know each other well, and that’s a good thing. A lot of my ability to do these complex surgeries involves having a good assistant and good equipment. We have both here.”

Marketing Director Janet Koritnik said an event is planned in February to introduce Camp to the community. In the meantime, appointments with Dr. Camp for women’s health needs can be made through the clinic.