Longstreet Clinic is launching a medical practice that will put several services under one roof to create the Longstreet Clinic Neuroscience & Orthopedic Center.

The new center at 655 Jesse Jewell Pkwy SE, Gainesville, will house neurosurgery, orthopedics, sports medicine, physical medicine and rehabilitation, interventional pain management and physical therapy.

“We really feel like we’re doing something different for this market and something very unique from a patient care perspective,” Longstreet CEO Mimi Collins said. “... This will enable us to move patients between specialties much more efficiently.”

She added, “We’re seeing an increase in demand, but we’re also seeing an increase in what patients really want out of their health care experience.”

One example of a patient who might benefit from the center is someone complaining of back pain.

“One thing we hope to have in play is a triage system so they … get plugged in with the right physician” from the outset, said Dr. Holmes Marchman, a physical medicine and rehabilitation doctor. 

Depending on the patient’s condition, “we could have them go down the hall to a neurosurgeon,” he said. “There’s a whole host of providers that are available, and the goal is to get that patient to see the right provider at the right time so they’re not spinning around in circles.”

Dr. Betsy Grunch, a neurosurgeon, also supports the “unified care” the center will enable.

“I have patients I send to orthopedics and vice versa several times a day,” she said.. 

To get all the providers under one roof, Longstreet has had to renovate what has largely been an orthopedics office. Neurosurgeons are moving or have moved to the space from old offices at Guilford Clinics.

Even though the center is in Gainesville, Collins said, “we have orthopedists and neurosurgeons in our Braselton and Demorest locations, so we’re really trying to provide many access points for patients and to offer programming around concussions, sports medicine, spine, joints, and so on, with embedded physical therapy and pain management available.

The “ultimate, long-term plan” is to put Longstreet Clinic Neuroscience & Orthopedic Center in a new building on the Longstreet campus off Jesse Jewell Parkway, Collins said.

Plans for that project had to be shelved last year when the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

“We’ll have to get that back on the table after covid,” Collins said.