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For the past 10 years, Dr. Christopher Adams has practiced urology in Mason City. At this point in his career, he is not only a physician but also the president of the Mason City Clinic.

Recently, he helped expand the Mason City Clinic’s coverage area with the opening of the Mason City Clinic at Northbridge Mall in Albert Lea in September.

Adams was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana. He earned his undergraduate degree from University of Denver and then attended Harvard Medical School to study urology. His surgical residency brought him to the University of Iowa.

Part of the training program Adams was a part of took place at the Mason City Clinic. The training lasted for four months, after which the clinic offered him a full-time position. Adams decided to take the position and signed a three-year contract. He has worked there for a decade.

Adams said he decided to pursue urology because of the wide range of ways he would be able to help patients.

“Urology is a full spectrum of patients, so pediatric, middle-aged, elderly, it’s different modalities of treatment,” he said. “It’s also a lot of medicine, so I see a lot of people in clinic and medically as opposed to pure surgery. So it keeps you on your toes and keeps you fresh.”

Adams said he does operations about three days a week.

“Some days I do major cancer surgeries robotically; some days I do more endoscopic surgery so kidney stones, enlarged prostate, incontinence surgeries,” he said. The rest of the time is spent doing clinic work.

He also does outreach work to bring health care to a wider range of patients. This can be as far away as Cresco, Iowa, a 90-minute drive.

“Even though Mason City’s about 27,000 people, we’re probably covering about 500 to 600,000 [people],” Adams said.

As of right now, Adams does purely clinic work at the Albert Lea location of the Mason City Clinic.

“What I really love is helping people,” Adams said. “You know, caring for people with cancer or … someone who is in the worst pain of their life from a kidney stone, making a direct impact. We see people at their worst. I mean, if you’re going to a doctor, and you need surgery, you’re really at your worst.”

He said he loves being able to make patients feel better or even extend their life so they can have more time to spend with their families and loved ones.

Not only is Adams a urologist, but he is also the president of the Mason City Clinic. He will serve in this role until December 2025 unless he decides to run for another term.

The role of this job is very extensive and includes being the chief executive officer of the clinic, head representative for the clinic’s board of directors, ambassador for political matters, financial responsibilities like authorizing transactions, performing media interviews and other tasks. He was elected to this role by about 40 of his peers.

Currently, Adams is both the youngest president of the Mason City Clinic and also the first African-American president of the clinic.

In addition to administrative work, Adams also helped bring the Mason City Clinic to Albert Lea.

“We have been sporadically seeing patients from the Albert Lea area, really since I got here, and then obviously, when the Mayo Clinic pulled out of the Albert Lea area, it was a devastating loss to the southern Minnesota community,” he said.

Otolaryngology, or ears, nose and throat, had already been operating in Albert Lea, Adams said, and the Mason City Clinic had been in Albert Lea even before MercyOne.

“We wanted to continue providing the sort of world-class health care that we provide here to southern Minnesota so that provided the impetus for us coming up to Minnesota,” he said.

Adams also said the clinic always considered southern Minnesota part of their coverage area.

The most difficult part of operating the clinic in Albert Lea, Adams said, was coordinating surgical care and other services over state lines.

“When someone needs surgery, there’s always this tug and pull of trying to keep people local, in their community to have surgery, versus if something’s very complicated, bringing them to a tertiary care center such as this to make sure they get the proper care they need,” he said.

Adams said he hopes the people of Albert Lea support the Mason City Clinic and rural health care in general. Rural health care is under attack, he said, and it is getting harder to provide care as the population of baby boomers who need acute care increases, while recruiting physicians and health care workers becomes more and more challenging.

Adams said Albert Lea is home to a lot of friendly people, and he is excited to be able to serve them and their health care needs. The Albert Lea community has also given him feedback about how rural health care should be. The Mayo Clinic, he said, has handled business and medicine in a way that has led to backlash and a sour taste in people’s mouths, so it has been positive for him to hear about patients’ viewpoints firsthand.

“I just want people in Albert Lea to continue to support us and to book appointments,” Adams said. “The busier we are, the more likely this is to succeed.” He said success would look like expanding health care in Albert Lea even further with full clinics.

When not working, Adams said he enjoys cooking, keeping up with sports, hiking, visiting national parks and traveling. He has been to all 50 states and 13 countries. He has also seen two solar eclipses.