Dr. Cecilia Ellis estimates she delivered more than 6,000 babies in the Akron area before she retired on Sept. 30 after more than three decades at OBGYN Associates of Akron.

Her advice to anyone becoming a doctor, in a hospital system or a small group, carries the lesson of those 37 years: “You better love what you do.”

“It’s never gotten old,” she said. “A new life is, I mean, it is miraculous every time you’re part of it.”

She didn’t plan on obstetrics. The pull came during her first OB-GYN rotation at Akron City Hospital, now Summa Health.

“Just the feeling, truly, after that first delivery, I would never look back and say I would change anything,” she said. “I loved every bit of it.”

Back when he was a young attending, Summa Health’s CEO emeritus and advisor, Dr. Cliff Deveny, knew her as an intern, and he still remembers her from then. “Right away, you just could tell she was different because of the way she really cared for anybody she was taking care of,” he said. Patients, he added, would wait hours just to see her.

Dr. Brittany Van Beek, who started at the practice straight out of residency in 2018 and calls Ellis “St. Cecilia,” says Ellis mentored her through every surgery and always sat with patients afterward so they understood what was happening.

Ellis is leaving with worries about where her field is headed. “I feel like it’s so much more business now than it ever was,” she said.

A 2024 American Medical Association study found the share of physicians in private practice fell 17.9% since 2012, driven by medical school debt and the pull of better pay and work-life balance at hospitals. Deveny estimates only about 30 to 40% of Akron deliveries now happen through private practice.

First up in retirement is her own new arrival. She’s tending to her first grandchild.