Meet Scott Diering, MD, the September 2016 Provider of the Month

Our physicians are experts...and great people too!

Meet Scott Diering, MD, the September 2016 Provider of the Month! Dr. Diering is Board Certified in Emergency Medicine and joined the medical staff in 2008. He grew up in New Jersey, and was the first person in his family to graduate from college.

Dr. Diering began his career in healthcare as a clinical psychologist, but found that he wanted to treat the whole person as a medical doctor. He attended Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and started out in neurosurgery before switching to emergency medicine.

Dr. Diering believes that healthcare is a dual responsibility – the individual must be accountable for their own health, and society should provide services to those who need them. He focuses on explaining and giving choices, but patients’ must advocate for their own health and understand what the doctor’s recommendations entail.

In his years of practice, Dr. Diering has seen technological improvements that have helped with more accurate diagnoses, but he’s also seen an increase in patients with psychosocial issues. The emergency department has become an intersection of social work and medical care with the national increase in drug and alcohol abuse. These problems affect every age, income and demographic group.

When he’s not practicing in the emergency department here in Gillette or at the Crow Indian Reservation a few days per month, Dr. Diering enjoys running, reading and has just begun woodworking. He’s also working on a follow-up to his book, Love Your Patients!, published in 2004. The idea for the original book came from his observations of colleagues who were excellent surgeons but were bad with people. The new book expands the ideas on how physicians can improve patient satisfaction directed toward a more general audience.

Since 2012, Dr. Diering has made annual trips as a medical director for the Rocky Mountain Honor Flight, overseeing the health of veterans who travel to Washington, D.C., visiting monuments and memorials to commemorate their military service.

Thank you Dr. Diering, for providing our patients with excellent care!