Recognizing an opportunity to provide more comprehensive treatment for its customers and a wider swath of the general community, two medical groups formed a partnership here more than a year ago with the intention of helping clients with sports-related injuries.

Northwest Orthopaedic Specialists and Columbia Medical Associates partnered to form the Northwest Sports Network. The doctors who make up the network see patients at clinics that Northwest Orthopaedic and Columbia Medical are operating.

“I think it’s worked out very well for both us,” says Dr. Jonathan Keeve, of Northwest Orthopaedic Specialists, who reached out to Columbia Medical Associates sports medicine physician Dr. Laura Fralich at the beginning of 2015.

“There’s a difference in training and treatment that orthopedists have than those in sports-related disciplines and vice versa,” Keeve says. “This partnership has given our orthopedic patients quicker access to their doctors and their patients quicker access to ours. We have created faster and better conduits to each other’s resources as a result.”

Some of the services the network’s physicians provide include concussion diagnosis and management; management of sprains, strains, and fractures; and diagnosis and treatment of overuse injuries, such as tendinitis and plantar fasciitis.

 “It wasn’t an idea that was driven so much by business, but more of a recognition that sports-related injuries are more common among the general population today, and we can work together to help treat patients,” Keeve says.

Northwest Orthopaedic has been in existence for more than 60 years and is regarded for its expertise and knowledge in the treatment of bone, joint and muscle problems. The company leases space in three locations around Spokane.

The largest operation is located on the fourth and fifth floors of the Spokane Integrated Medical Services Plaza at 601 W. Fifth in downtown Spokane. A medical clinic occupies the fourth floor and an ambulatory surgery center takes up the entire fifth floor. The two floors total 41,000 square feet.

Opened in 2004, the clinic’s ambulatory surgery center has been ranked routinely above the 95th percentile among Spokane-area practices for patient satisfaction, according to a national organization that works with more than 26,000 health care providers across the country to help improve the patient experience.

Northwest Orthopaedic also operates a Spokane Valley clinic at 12410 E. Sinto and a North Spokane clinic at 212 E. Central.

“Between our physicians and various specialists, we have a collective brainpower of 350 years,” says Keeve of Northwest Orthopaedic’s 25 physicians and 10 physician’s assistants. Northwest Orthopaedic’s three clinics have a total of more than 100 employees. Keeve, 60, has worked for Northwest Orthopaedic for 28 years.

Columbia Medical Associates is a Spokane-based physicians’ group that Group Health Cooperative acquired in 2011 and that has expanded since then by acquiring the assets of specialty doctor practices here.

 It operates a total of nine clinics in the Spokane area, with three of those clinics having physicians whose practices are primarily dedicated to treating sports and sports-related injuries.

Fralich works at Columbia Medical’s office at 1334 N. Whitman Lane in Liberty Lake. Columbia Medical’s  largest clinic—the Family Health Center located in 11,300 square feet of space in downtown Spokane at 910 W. Fifth—is on the sixth floor of a building owned by Providence Health & Services next to Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center. The North Spokane clinic is located at 9631 N. Nevada. 

Fralich, who is 41, played high school basketball at Central Valley and helped lead the Bears to the AAA state title in 1993. She played collegiately at St. Mary’s and the Master’s College, both in California, as well as at the Community Colleges of Spokane.

Before her college career was over, she required two knee surgeries to repair the anterior cruciate ligament in each knee.

“I remember in college being on the team bus reading a story in Sports Illustrated about an injured athlete and it just sounded so painful. A week later I blew out my knee,” Fralich says.

As for Keeve, though he didn’t play college sports, before starting medical school in his 20s, he was hit by a car and nearly killed in Wisconsin as he and a group of friends were cycling across the country.

“I was on crutches for a year during the first year of med school. I think what Laura and I bring besides our medical experience to sports medicine is that we’re empathetic. We’ve been there. I think that’s what separates our network from maybe some others in the area,” Keeve says.

Keeve today is still an avid cyclist.

In addition to providing care and treatment for its regular patients, the Northwest Sports Network has offered low-cost physicals to area high school athletes in Spokane and surrounding communities, Fralich says.

The sports network frequently charges just $10 for an athletic physical and in return will take the money and donate it to the athletic department the high school student attends.

Since forming, the Northwest Sports Network has given more than 300 physicals to high school area athletes and provided educational clinics to groups of athletes, coaches, and trainers on how to avoid injuries, according to Fralich.

“We do Saturday for team sports, triathlon groups … we’re really committed to using the network for community service,” Fralich says. “So much of the prevention of sports injuries lies in the education. The more people know the better their chances of not having to see us for help.”