Ron W. Scott, PT, JD, EdD, LLM, MSBA

Ronald (Ron) W. Scott, EdD, LLM, PT, has been a health care professional since 1969. He was a Navy hospital corpsman during the Vietnam conflict, after which he left military service in 1973 to study physical therapy. Ron earned his Bachelor of Science degree in health?related professions with a certificate in physical therapy at the University of Pittsburgh in 1977. He graduated summa cum laude and was the American Physical Therapy Association's Mary McMillan scholar, as well as Pitt's Jessie Wright awardee. Ron then worked as a clinical physical therapist at Mercy Hospital, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, until his commission in the Army as a first lieutenant in 1978.

Ron's first assignment as an Army physical therapist was at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. After that assignment, he attended the University of San Diego Law School under Army sponsorship, where he concentrated in medical law and jurisprudence and was a law review editor. He graduated magna cum laude in May 1983 with a Juris Doctor degree.

Ron's next assignment was as a trial attorney in Frankfurt, Germany, where he prosecuted and defended more than 75 federal felony criminal cases. He also served as Chief, Administrative, Civil, and International Law, for the Army's Third Armored Division.
 
After his return from Europe in 1987, Ron attended the Army's postdoctoral Master of Laws program at the Judge Advocate General's School on the University of Virginia campus at Charlottesville, where he was a Commandant's List honors graduate. He was then assigned as a tort and health care malpractice claims attorney at the U.S. Army Claims Service, Fort Meade, Maryland, where he supervised the operations of 15 claims offices in eight western states.

From August 1989 to September 1992, Ron was Chief Physical Therapist and Legal Advisor, Bayne Jones Army Community Hospital, Fort Polk, Louisiana. During that time, Ron played a crucial role in developing the American Physical Therapy Association's "Promoting Quality/ Managing Risk" program, designed to educate physical therapists and other health care professionals about how to simultaneously manage malpractice risk in clinical practice and promote the highest quality patient care. Ron was the program's charter legal faculty coordinator from January 1990 through January 1993.

From September 1992 to July 1994, Ron was an Army major and Chief, Acute Musculoskeletal Care Section, Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston (San Antonio), Texas. During that time, he also served as a legal consultant to the command, staff, Army Health Services Command, and Army Medical Specialist Corps.
Ron served several roles within the American Physical Therapy Association: member, Ethics and Judicial Committee, 1992-1997; faculty member, "Promoting Quality /Managing Risk" program; charter editorial advisory board member for PT: The Magazine of Physical Therapy, 1991-2001; book reviewer and abstracter for the Journal of the American Physical Therapy Association; Membership Chair, Southcentral District, Pennsylvania Physical Therapy Association; and  editor, Section on Geriatric’s CINAHL-indexed journal, Issues on Aging, 1996-2001. He is licensed to practice law in Texas, and is an active member of the Texas and American Bar Associations. 

From May 1994 to August 1998, Ron was Associate Professor (and Interim Chair in 1995-96) in the Department of Physical Therapy, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He was faculty, Lebanon Valley College, Annville, Pennsylvania, from 1998-2002. He is currently physical therapist-in-charge, HealthSouth-RIOSA, Crestway, San Antonio, Texas.

In addition to this book, Ron has written more than 80 articles, many on health care malpractice and its prevention. Ron has presented seminars across the United States, and in Canada, Puerto Rico, England, and Ireland, on various aspects of health care malpractice prevention to groups of health and legal professionals on more than 125 occasions. He is an adjunct faculty/guest lecturer in the physical therapy programs at Husson College, Bangor, Maine; Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff; Rocky Mountain University, Provo, Utah; Shenandoah University, Virginia; and the University of Indianapolis.