U of C Sport Medicine Centre opens Calgary’s first no-referral Acute Injury Knee Clinic

CALGARY, AB  January 5, 2009 -- “If you hurt your knee, one of the most important things you can receive is timely, accurate assessment and care,” says Dr. Nick Mohtadi, “and unfortunately that doesn’t always happen in today’s health-care system.” Mohtadi is an orthopedic surgeon with the Sport Medicine Centre (SMC), located in the Faculty of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary.

The SMC announced today the creation of a revolutionary new Acute Knee Injury Clinic that Mohtadi hopes will cut down waiting-list times and help more patients receive appropriate care when they need it.

“There are several unique elements about this clinic,” explains Mohtadi. “First of all, you don’t need a family physician referral. If you injure your knee playing soccer, hockey, or carrying groceries to the car, all you have to do is go online, book an appointment, and in a matter of days you should be able to come in for an assessment and begin receiving treatment for your injured knee. There’s no way people should be suffering and risking more permanent injury by waiting so long.”

After booking an appointment online, patients will be assessed by non-physician experts—kinesiologists and certified athletic therapists—who will determine an appropriate course of treatment for a patient: Rehabilitation, physiotherapy, or surgery, whichever course is most effective.

The SMC’s Acute Knee Injury Clinic follows the lead of the Alberta Bone & Joint Foundation’s landmark study, which used a similar process to cut waiting times by an astonishing ninety per cent and reported better patient outcomes.

Mohtadi is certain that the SMC’s clinic will have similar results. “Absolutely, the Sport Medicine Centre is an elite clinic. Our non-physician experts and physicians treat Alberta’s top athletes and sports teams.

We want to be able to treat more Albertans and we are certain that given our level of expertise and the clinic’s advanced practices we can do that with better outcomes for everyone who comes to us with an injury.”

The clinic’s services will be covered by Alberta Health Care. If you are injured and you’d like to receive treatment, head to the Sport Medicine Centre’s online triage registration www.sportmed.ucalgary.ca and follow the ‘acute knee injury clinic’ link.