Saturday morning clinic in Portland re-opens on September 3 providing a cost-effective alternative to emergency room visits for sports-related injuries
PORTLAND, ME (September 1) – The high school sports season begins in earnest this week, and with the return of Friday night high school football, soccer and field hockey comes the inevitable sports-related injuries associated with high impact, fast-paced field sports. To provide injured student athletes with an alternative to potentially costly emergency room treatment of bruises, sprains and fractures, OA Centers for Orthopaedics has re-opened its Urgent Sports Injury Clinic for the fall athletic season beginning on Saturday, September 3 at its Portland office.
Staffed by orthopedic sports specialists, the OA urgent sports injury clinic is open every Saturday morning through October 22, 2011 Athletes may walk in at 9:00 a.m. without an appointment to see a sports medicine doctor for their injury.
With high costs, potentially long waits and a likely referral from the emergency room doctor to an orthopedic sports medicine doctor for treatment and observation, a trip to the emergency room is not necessarily the best course of action. The cost of a typical emergency room visit in Maine ranges from $269 to $1,174, according to Harvard Pilgrim Health. The cost of a typical visit to OA’s Urgent Sports Injury Clinic compares favorably at 60% to 90% of the cost of an emergency room visit depending upon diagnostic services required as a result of the visit.
“With OA’s Urgent Sports Injury Clinic, injured athletes in Southern Maine have an alternative to costly and time intensive emergency room visits,” says John Wipfler, CEO of the OA Centers for Orthopaedics. “Instead of seeing an ER doc, athletes have access to the same physicians that take care of such teams as the Portland Sea Dogs, the Portland Pirates and many other professional, international, collegiate and high school athletes.”
The urgent sports injury clinic is available at OA’s Portland office, located at 33 Sewall Street in Portland. For more information, call 207-828-2100, or visit http://www.orthoassociates.com/urgent_sports_injury_clinic/.
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