St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute has bolstered its physiatry department and is expanding and remodeling its outpatient physiatry area, says Nicole Stewart, director of communications for Inland Northwest Health Services, which operates St. Luke’s. 

Spokane-based Rehabilitation Associates, which operated for years as an independent practice located within St. Luke’s, has ceased operations after joining the hospital on May 31, Stewart says. Drs. Mark Varga and Keith Mackenzie, practitioners with Rehabilitation Associates, have joined St. Luke’s as staff physiatrists, she says. 

Mackenzie has been providing rehabilitation care in Spokane for 37 years. Meanwhile, Varga has been an admitting physician with St. Luke’s for 17 years. He has been with Rehabilitation Associates since he relocated to Spokane in 1999, Stewart says.

Rehabilitation Associates has been located within St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute since it became the regional rehabilitation hospital in 1994, says Stewart. 

Dr. Greg Carter, medical director at St. Luke’s, says Rehabilitation Associates physicians have been working with St. Luke’s over the years, and some of the practice’s patients have been receiving care at St. Luke’s. 

In all, 400 patients transferred from Rehabilitation Associates to the hospital’s official care in what Stewart says was a “smooth transition.”

With the additions, St. Luke’s, whose main campus is located at 711 S. Cowley, says its physiatry practice has grown to 11 physiatrists and three physician assistants. Carter says the hospital plans to bring on two more physiatrists this fall.

The physiatry department is located in an office building that’s attached by skywalk to the main hospital building.

“We are forming a unified medical staff so everybody works here within St. Luke’s,” says Carter. 

Physiatrists, more formally known as physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) physicians, treat a wide range of medical conditions affecting the brain, spinal cord, nerves, bones, joints, ligaments, muscles, and tendons.

Carter says physiatry is “a medical subspecialty in and of itself, so all of our physicians are board certified in physical medicine and rehabilitation.” He says some St. Luke’s physicians also practice in subspecialties in areas like spinal cord injury, brain injury, and neuromuscular disorders.

“So (the practice of physiatry) is a specialty oriented towards working with people with physical disabilities,” says Carter.

Physically, St. Luke’s is expanding and remodeling its outpatient physiatry practice. Stewart says the expansion will increase the number of exam rooms from four to 14 and will double the size of the physiatry practice to 6,000 square feet of space.

Carter says, “It’s been completely remodeled with the intent of really facilitating a patient flow. All of our patients have some degree of physical disability ... so the whole registration area, check in, patent rooming, all that was specifically designed to facilitate to people with disabilities.”

Carter predicts the renovations will be finished by August, if not sooner. 

“There was a lot of give and take on the clinical models,” he says. “In the end, everyone was satisfied with the final markup, and starting about three months ago, we have been remodeling while also using some of the space.”

Bouten Construction Co., of Spokane, is the contractor, and NAC Architecture, also of Spokane, is the architect for the expansion.