Meet the doctors, nurses, and care providers making a difference every day, one patient at a time
Dr. Pat Carsell is one of the newest faces at CHP, joining our growing dental team in February as Dental Director. Dr. Carsell had a successful career in private dental practice in Dalton for over thirty years, and upon retirement in 2022, he discovered that it was harder than he had realized to leave dentistry behind. “After leaving my office it was difficult placing dentistry on the sidelines,” he says. Dr. Carsell was excited to find an opportunity to extend his career further in a new role in which he provides clinical and administrative oversight to CHP’s dental practices in Pittsfield, Adams, and Great Barrington.
Raised in Illinois, Dr. Carsell’s path to dentistry began close to home as he received a Bachelor of Science Degree as a Pre-Dental major at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. When a recruiter from Loyola University of Chicago College of Dental Surgery came to meet his cohort of classmates, he was encouraged to apply and says, “from here on I exited the gates with focused excitement and intent.” He eventually followed a classmate to the northeast and completed his residency in Burlington, Vermont and later purchased his General Dentistry practice in Dalton in 1988.
When considering the biggest challenges of his new role at CHP, Dr. Carsell anticipates that one will be quickly learning about the AI platforms that have become available for use in Dentistry. He sees this as a challenge to continue “learning and implementing what we can to improve the execution and delivery of excellent care in a timely fashion to our patients.”
On a broader community scale, a challenge for the Berkshire patient population is the growing wait time to be seen for both new and established patients, who are waiting weeks for appointments. Dr. Carsell would “like to see that we have added enough staff to provide more timely care for our patients. If there are incomplete treatment plans, it would be our goal to try and complete them, whenever possible, in a timelier fashion.”
What’s your favorite, local Berkshire attraction?
Tanglewood Performing Arts Center is my favorite venue. My wife Laurel and I have attended numerous BSO performances, however, the popular artist series has been our favorite time of the summer season in the Berkshires.
What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
In my free time I enjoy (most of all) foreign and domestic travel with family and friends, as well as motorcycling, sports cars, snowmobiling, and skiing. When the weather breaks, I’ll get back to gardening, which I really enjoy in the summer.
What are you currently enjoying watching or reading?
Recently, I visited my 92-year-old Dad in Moline, Illinois, and borrowed his copy of John Deere’s Company, A History of Deere and Company and Its Times. It’s very detailed and just shy of 900 pages. I’m presently a quarter of the way through it. I also love all James Patterson’s collaborations. My favorite miniseries are Yellowstone, Landman, and The Lincoln Lawyer.