To Dr. Alex Ammar, a vascular surgeon and president and CEO of Wichita Surgical Specialists, this is a sad time of the year.

The sadness doesn't come from his personal life or anything involving the running of one of the country's largest independent surgical practices. Instead, it's because "One Shining Moment," the celebratory song that concludes weeks of March Madness TV coverage, has been sung and the NCAA Basketball Tournament is over for another year.

Ammar, a college hoops fan - particularly the Wichita State Shockers - said, "When that song is sung, I am depressed for a few months."

Ammar is a busy man. In addition to operating his practice, he's professor and chair of the Department of Surgery at KU School of Medicine-Wichita as well as chairman of the 4-Wichita board that advocates for and raises funds to support the school's mission. He concedes he doesn't have a lot of hobbies. Golf, as frustrating for him as it is for many others, is something he's mostly set aside. He finds working the yard and garden a relaxing and welcome change of pace.

His son Chad joined the practice last July and is also a vascular surgeon. "That's pretty awesome, to not only work with your son but to work with him in the same specialty." Chad and his wife, Erica, have also given him his first grandchild, George, who was born last November.

Although he grew up in Virginia and attended medical school there, Ammar came to Wichita - where uncles George and Jim Farha founded Wichita Surgical Specialists - for his general surgical training. He joined their practice after a vascular fellowship in California.

Decades of work as a surgeon and operating a practice have made him a dedicated advocate of the value of having a medical school and residency programs in Wichita. Finding and keeping top-quality doctors is often a matter of exposing them to the city and what it offers in both medicine and lifestyle. And having the training programs here does that.

Ammar recites statistics to back up the success of the home-grown approach. All four vascular surgeons in Wichita did their general surgical training here, as did two of six cardiac ones, six of 10 plastic surgeons, five of six colorectal specialists and 24 of 33 general surgeons.

"That's why I'm active on the 4-Wichita development board. Because of what it means to have medical education in Wichita," Ammar said. "It's crucial to producing the health care environment and quality of life we have here."

And board involvement keeps him distracted until next year's March Madness comes along.