Julie Agbabian says the University of Michigan's
MedSport facility is intended to be a "one-stop shop" for sports medicine services.
"At some places, you'd have to go to CVS or somewhere down the street to get your cast," says Agbabian, who is MedSport's operations manager. "We don't want you doing that. You limped in here; we don't want you limping out of here."
While there's a variety of casts, crutches and braces onsite at MedSport, that's just one example of the full range of services the facility provides. The 45,000-square-foot suite, located in the Domino's Farms Office Park, also houses an exercise and training floor, ultrasound and X-ray facilities, exam rooms and a pool, managed by 140 staffers including physicians, physical therapists and certified athletic trainers. Satellite locations in Livonia, Brighton and at the
Ann Arbor Ice Cube also provide a similar assortment of services.
"It's designed to get you back to doing whatever you want to do, whether that's gardening or cooking dinner or going up and down stairs," Agbabian says. "We try to bridge the gap from a total disability to getting back to your normal life activity."
The facility furthers its unconventional approach to sports medicine through a close-knit, cooperative staff environment. Returning patients are seen in a wide-open exam area with multiple benches, attended to by a group that generally includes a physician, a physician assistant, an athletic trainer and an athletic training resident.
"That's the difference from going to a private clinic," Agbabian says. "You don't go to an exam room, then go to see somebody else, then go to see somebody else. Everyone hears the physician's plan and works on the plan together."
Bruce Miller is MedSport's associate medical director and one of its physicians. He says the collaborative environment was what interested him in joining MedSport in 2001.
"MedSport's very unique because it's a very team-oriented approach," Miller says. "We as caregivers really enjoy working in the team environment, and I think our patients enjoy it as well."
Physicians and trainers are literally within shouting distance of each other, as the wide-open exercise floor is located right next door to the exam area. The floor takes up about 8,000 square feet of the facility and contains a full range of exercise gear, including weight equipment, exercise bikes, a treadmill, a stretching station, a basketball hoop and a baseball pitching station. In addition to these more traditional forms of training, Agbabian says MedSport's physical therapists and athletic trainers work with each patient to make sure he or she is capable of carrying out daily activities - which can mean exercises as simple as practicing getting down on one's knees, or climbing stairs.
"While the machines look impressive, we are really doing unique exercises with every patient," she says.
MedSport also offers services in the field to numerous schools and sporting organizations. Full-time MedSport employees are contracted to provide onsite services for
USA Hockey, and for 15 local schools in locations including Dexter, Belleville and Livonia. As MedSport's athletic training services coordinator, Patrick Dyer is responsible for managing these trainers in the field.
"Instead of a coach making decisions, we've got an athletic trainer there," Dyer says. "They've got a consistent face that knows the athletes."
The combined MedSport facilities served about 100,000 patients from July 2012 through June 2013, 62,000 of them at the Domino's Farms location. But when MedSport was founded in 1986, its operations were considerably smaller. The original office, also located in Domino's Farms, was only 5,000 square feet. Agbabian, who was one of less than 15 staffers when she started at MedSport in 1990, says it was a relief when the facility expanded to its current location in 2003.
"That's why we love the [exercise] floor," she says. "We used to have to do everything in the hallway or in the parking lot."
Since the move, MedSport has continued to expand its services in other ways. The university's sports neurology department,
NeuroSport, moved into the facility earlier this week to provide onsite service for concussion patients. MedSport has also gone about developing a performing arts
injury clinic over the past five years, specializing in injuries sustained by dancers, instrumentalists and other artists. As with MedSport's school outreach work, U-M has contracted MedSport performing arts specialists to provide on-site support for a variety of performances. MedSport physical therapy clinical specialist Kristen Schuyten has applied 20 years' personal experience as a dancer to her work heading up the performing arts clinic.
"It's something I struggled with while I was a dancer," Schuyten says. "I had several injuries over the course of my career."
Schuyten's past experience is typical for MedSport staff; Agbabian, a former student athlete herself, says most staff members were athletes at some point in their lives. Rehabilitation aide Ben Cronin is one of the more unusual case studies in the transition from playing sports to working in sports medicine. Cronin, who was recruited for the U-M basketball team while pursuing his bachelor's in kinesiology, suffered a hip injury that ended his basketball career. But he found an entirely new path over the course of his two years of rehabilitation therapy at MedSport.
"I got to know the staff really well, and my interest in physical therapy really started to bloom, which eventually turned into someone asking me if I wanted to work here," Cronin says. "It's all about the love of helping people get better."
Agbabian says that personal connection is another key element to MedSport's formula for success.
"It's a very motivated group we work with," she says. "They've seen it from the inside out and that's why they love it. Sometimes people may hear you had a sports injury and say, 'Well, what does it matter that you can't play football any more?' But we can really speak to patients on their terms and say, 'We hear you. We understand why it matters to you.'"
Patrick Dunn is an Ann Arbor-based freelance writer and contributor to Metromode and Concentrate.
All photos by Doug Coombe
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