A regional practice dedicated to treating patients with bone and joint problems is making a multimillion-dollar investment to upgrade its outpatient offices.
The Crystal Clinic Orthopaedic Center recently opened two new locations in Wadsworth and Hudson and began updating and expanding several other offices throughout the Akron area.
“We have the opportunity to improve our access to the community and meet the orthopedic needs that are out there,” said Holli Cholley, chief nursing and operations officer for the Crystal Clinic Orthopaedic Center.
The orthopedic practice is investing about $4.8 million to improve and expand several of its outpatient clinics, according to Erica Rosenthal, a spokeswoman for Summa Health System.
The Crystal Clinic is a joint venture between Summa and Crystal Clinic physicians. The practice provides services for patients who have problems with their bones, joints, muscles, tendons, skin and related tissues.
The partnership includes outpatient locations throughout the region, as well as the Crystal Clinic Orthopaedic Center inpatient location at Summa St. Thomas Hospital.
The Crystal Clinic this month relocated its Wadsworth office from inside Wadsworth-Rittman Hospital to a larger space on High Street, Cholley said.
The new Wadsworth office has more exam rooms and a larger procedure room for injections and other outpatient procedures. The location also offers digital radiography that provides physicians instant access on computers to X-rays that are taken on site.
“Our old way of doing radiography in the office took approximately 20 minutes a patient,” Cholley said. “Now we can take the X-ray, produce it in an electronic version and have the physician looking at it in six or seven minutes.
“We are deploying it at all our locations. We’re timing it as we’re renovating and bringing new offices up.”
The Crystal Clinic added physical therapy services in Wadsworth, as well as in its expanded location that opened last month in Hudson.
“I believe there’s both coordination benefits as well as outcome benefits,” Cholley said. “It allows our physicians to walk over to the physical therapy side and see how the patient is doing.”
The Hudson location also has digital radiography, hand therapy and appointments with orthopedic subspecialists.
Earlier this year, the practice opened a renovated and expanded location in Medina with digital radiography and expanded physical therapy. The Cuyahoga Falls, Green and Streetsboro offices also will be expanding by early next year.
The practice has 36 doctors on staff.
Each year, the Crystal Clinic provides outpatient services to about 110,000 patients and performs about 12,000 surgeries.
Cheryl Powell can be reached at 330-996-3902 or cpowell@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow Powell on Twitter at twitter.com/abjcherylpowell.