Donald Palmisano, former AMA president, dies | news

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Dr. Donald Palmisano, a son of the Irish Channel who became president of the American Medical Association, died on Nov. 23 at Passages Hospice in New Orleans of complications from a fall at her home, her husband, Robin Spencer Palmisano, said. He is 83 years old.

He was an amazing person with endless curiosity, said Dr. Ronald French, a friend since their undergraduate days at Tulane University. What made him a detective was his incredible curiosity for knowledge and for truth and justice.

Palmisano became president of the American Medical Associations in 2003 after climbing the organization’s power ladder as a trustee, an executive committee member, secretary-treasurer and president-elect.

He is a general and vascular surgeon. In addition to that full-time job, he earned a pilot’s license and a law degree, took up nature photography, built a business to sell his photos and was elected president of the Louisiana State Medical Society.

He is very intelligent, very inquisitive and very deliberate, said Dr. Daniel H. Stormy Johnson Jr., a local radiologist who preceded Palmisano as an AMA president.

Dr. Donald Palmisano in May 2003, shortly before he became president of the American Medical Association.

File photo of Ellis Lucia

Palmisano obtained his law degree after being sued for malpractice by a patient he did not operate on. The case was dropped because he said he wanted to know how such cases are tried. He was determined to do it, even if it meant taking night classes after morning surgery and squeezing in a few innings of the kids’ Little League games in the afternoon. He never practiced law, but he said in a 2003 interview that the practice helped him organize his presentations and develop debate strategies.

I always enjoyed challenges, he said.

Palmisano grew up in an apartment above Caronnas Restaurant and Bar, which his grandparents ran on Magazine and Josephine streets. A voracious reader, he devoured the comics, which he bought at the drugstore across the street because, he said in an interview, they could take me to faraway places.

Spider-Man is a favorite. In addition to his environmental photos, a superhero poster with this message adorns the walls of Palmisanos’ office: Nobody said saving the world would be easy.

Palmisano successfully lobbied for a bill in 1978 in the Louisiana Legislature that capped malpractice awards at $500,000 and set up patient compensation funds and review panels, French said.

A graduate of De La Salle High School, where he edited the school paper and was on the debate team, Palmisano earned undergraduate and medical degrees at Tulane, though he nearly dropped out of medical school after losing of the anatomy exam. When he told his father, Dominic Palmisano, a New Orleans police officer, what he intended to do, his father didn’t hear it and gave him three pieces of advice: Do your homework. Have courage. Do not give up.

Friends say that was enough to fill Palmisano with the determination that characterized his life. He had a residency at Charity Hospital and served two years in the Air Force as chief of surgery for the 821st Medical Group, receiving the Air Force Commendation Medal for his work after the B-52 crash.

“He was almost a Renaissance man,” said Donna Klein, a health care attorney and longtime friend. “Everything he did in his life, he did with such passion. He thinks he can save the world, but he does it one at a time.”

In addition to her husband, survivors include a son, Donald J. Palmisano Jr. of Oak Park, Illinois; two daughters, Mary Ellen Palmisano and Donna Palmisano Schmidt, both of Metairie; a brother, Leonard Palmisano of Metairie; a sister, Marylyn Haddican of Metairie; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

A funeral will be held on December 30 at 10 a.m. at Our Lady of Peace Chapel in St. Pauls School, 917 South Jahncke Ave., Covington. Visitation will begin at 9 am

Burial will be private.

Serenity Funeral Home of Covington is in charge of arrangements.

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