GREAT FALLS — A new walk-in orthopedic clinic is now open in Great Falls, promising to deliver specialized care with shorter wait times. Great Falls Clinic began seeing patients on Monday at its new facility, OrthoNOW.
Located in the Great Falls Clinic Specialty Center, the clinic offers evaluation and treatment for sprains and strains, closed fractures, sports and work injuries, torn ligaments and tendons, and casting and splinting.
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"Some conditions really require more urgent attention than that. Not to mention people just want to get back to their normal day to day life as soon as possible," said Dr. Drew Blackman, an orthopedic surgeon with the Great Falls Clinic. "So by offering same-day walk-in care, we can help facilitate, getting back to normal as soon as soon as you can."
Hospital leaders hope the new clinic will change the long-standing perception that getting a clinic appointment is difficult.
"We want to create the ability for people to get in, be seen fast. Of course, meet their expectations with world-class care, but also, again, give them that access point in that option to choose," Mark Robinson said.
Robinson said the clinic has been months in the making after collaboration with partner physicians and hospital leaders.
"We look at the financials behind it as well to make sure it makes sense for this community and makes sense for something. And, and basically set ourselves up for success before we even, you know, hang a shingle or put a, put a sign up," Robinson said.
The opening also solves a recent marketing mystery in the Electric City.
Billboards around Great Falls showing x-rays of broken bones generated a lot of buzz, with some residents guessing they were public service announcements about distracted driving, or related to a recent commotion at a congressional hearing in DC.
"I've read the comments....it's been robust. And that's exactly what you want to create. You want to create a buzz and that buzz that we've created is showing something that people have to guess what it is," Robinson said.
"We know there's a lot of people in this community, in this region who are injured, who need our help, and we're here to help. But we haven't always had the depth and breadth of access points as we may have liked to. So having OrthoNOW opened I think is really going to improve that," Blackman said.
The Great Falls Clinic Specialty Center is located at 3000 15th Avenue South and can be accessed through Entrance B on the second floor in the Orthopedics Department. The OrthoNOW Clinic is open Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m to 5:00 p.m.
This article has been lightly edited with the assistance of AI for clarity, syntax, and grammar.
