By Staff
Athletic Management, 17.6, October/November 2005, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/am/am1706/wupublicity.htm
One of the most valuable financial assets a high school athletic program has is its ability to provide publicity. Spectators at an event, who all buy products and use services, are influenced by the corporate names they see at a game, especially if the names represent hometown businesses. An Arizona school district is capitalizing on this asset to upgrade sports medicine coverage for its athletes.
At home events of the five high schools in the Scottsdale Unified School District this year, banners bear the name of Scottsdale Healthcare, a not-for-profit organization that runs two hospitals and several outpatient clinics in the Phoenix area. The banners are part of a contract, which took effect at the start of the 2005-06 school year, under which Scottsdale Healthcare provides on-site certified athletic trainers for all teams’ practices and events, facilitates physician coverage for every home football game, and conducts preseason physicals.
The school district pays $25,000, but that’s only a quarter of the costs incurred by Scottsdale Healthcare to provide the services. Thus the banners, which allow the medical group to get its name before potential paying patients, now and in the future.
“We feel that’s a valuable source of advertising,” says Dean Thomas, Director of Orthopedics and Neuroscience for Scottsdale Healthcare, “and we look at this as a long-term relationship with our community. We want to be there over the course of a lifetime to provide care for the student-athletes—later, when they’re young adults, and when they have kids, we want them to come here.
“This relationship is creating brand awareness in our community,” he continues. “And it helps us develop our sports medicine program. We offer surgery, therapy, and other services injured student-athletes need, and it lets people know we provide those services.”
Scottsdale Healthcare athletic trainers are at the schools during practices, go to camps with teams, and cover home events. In addition to covering football games, the physicians hold bump-and-bruise clinics the next morning. “An athlete wakes up Saturday morning after a game and something hurts. Rather than go to an emergency room or wait until Monday, he can come to the bump and bruise clinic and be quickly evaluated,” Thomas says.
Nathan Slater, Athletic Director at Coronado High School in Scottsdale, says he is pleased with the arrangement. “We can get students onto the field faster and keep them off the field more effectively when needed,” he says. “We’re getting professional help and advice instead of, ‘Well, let’s put a bandage on it and hope.’ We’re taking decisions out of the hands of people who aren’t qualified to make them and putting them in the hands of the athletic trainers.”
As other high schools consider the idea, experts caution athletic directors to choose their sports medicine coverage based on more than a business arrangement, and Scottsdale did weigh other factors. For example, Coronado was able to retain the same team physician as in past years, and at least one other district school was given a say in the hiring of its athletic trainer.
Six major professional organizations involved in clinical sports medicine have developed a consensus statement on the qualifications of a team physician in hopes of guiding schools. Although the statement does not discuss business relationships, it offers guidelines about a physician’s training, experience, and current practice. In addition to being currently licensed as an MD or osteopathic doctor, the statement says it’s desirable for a team physician to have a specialty certification and formal training and experience in sports medicine.
The physicians attending Scottsdale schools’ home football games are not all sports medicine specialists, but the group includes orthopedists whose practices comprise a great deal of sports medicine and primary-care physicians who also provide significant sports-related care. “A lot of sports medicine injuries can be treated medically and don’t require surgery, so we have several primary-care type physicians who have an interest, some of whom have done fellowships in sports medicine,” Thomas says.
Thomas adds that the arrangement is also a way for Scottsdale Healthcare and its doctors to give back to the community. “The physicians participating really just believe in the program and want to provide this service to the community. They’re not going to get anything back that would compensate them for their time,” he says. “It really is more a labor of love.”
The consensus statement on choosing a team physician can be seen by entering “consensus statement” in the search window at: www.acsm.org.
Athletic Management explored choosing team physicians in its February/March 2004 issue. Search “second opinion” at: www.AthleticSearch.com.